Miss M

I’m so excited! My sister is coming up to my school on Monday to do a workshop with all of the third grade students. She teaches blind students and this is a workshop designed to help the students be more understanding of children with disabilities.

Students will have the opportunity to visit many different stations around the library, assisted by the teachers. They include the following (although I may have forgotten some of them):

• Braille Center…she brings a few Braille typing machines, some books in Braille and a sheet for each student to decode that is written in Braille.
• A center that partners the students up to have one lead another who is blindfolded up to the office to choose a piece of candy (by touch) out of a bowl of candy.
• A center that has bottles of different scents that the students try to identify. It’s things like lemon, vanilla, chocolate, etc.
• A center that is a listening station, where all of the students have to identify different sounds just by listening. These are sounds such as a telephone, water running, someone walking, etc.
• A center that has verbal instructions of patterns and things to draw. One student describes how to draw the pattern. Everyone else tries to draw it without looking at the picture.
• A center where you are blindfolded and trying to put together puzzles (the wooden ones that you fit a shape into a hole) and play some tactile board games.
• The last one that I remember was a center that had a bag with different shapes in it. You drew 3 cards that had shapes on them, and you tried to reach in the bag and pull out the correct shape without looking at it to match the shapes on your cards.

My students had a great time with it last year! I can’t wait to see it in action, again!

It was a long first day back to school. When I got there, the phones were out of service. They didn’t run the air conditioning the whole week we were out, so the whole building was hot. In addition to that, the air conditioning in our wing is on the fritz, so it was a long sweaty day. ugh Third grade is one of those grades where most of the kids haven’t hit puberty, yet, so there isn’t much need for deoderant. Well….some of my students have failed 2 grade levels. Those few students could really benefit from some stink-repellant! These are 11 going on 12 year olds in 3rd grade…basically almost 6th graders or middle school children. Imagine a hot and sticky classroom with hot and smelly children. It basically smells like a gym locker room in our wing.

Quick School Day Rundown

I planned well, so the day went smoothly. The only time they acted up was in line to go to and from lunch and to the art room for music class. I also had a child throw raisins in the art room.

• Students came in and copied their spelling words, then I read Mrs. Piggle Wiggle to them as as they cut apart math manipulatives.
• Then we did our math activity of finding the net change using positive and negative numbers.
• We did a quick writing activity of identifying 3 main ideas that they want to incorporate into their instruction writing.
• We went to lunch…I had tuna and mayo with a Diet Coke.
• We came back from lunch and learned about the elements of a Fairy Tale (which I had started introducing in the morning with Mrs. Piggle Wiggle). They copied some definitions for Fairy Tale Vocabulary and then came down to do an activity with the Soft /c/ sound which is what our spelling words are focused on this week.
• We left from there to go to Music Class. During music class I filled in the forms to request what I want to teach next year.
• Students came back from Music and set up for the end of the day (Independent Reading today). Then they gave me their daily agendas to put in their behavior grades and we went out for Physical Activity (Recess).
• After our time outside, students came in to cool off. I called them to get their agendas, they got drinks, put their chairs up, with their backpacks on top, and found a comfortable spot on the carpet to get into their reading as classical music played softly in the background.
• Students were released from reading by the announcements to dismiss them for car riders, walkers, bus riders and Extended Day (after-school care).

Then the girlchild comes in from across the hall and starts her homework. I grade papers and plan while we wait for my son to arrive at the school…walking there from the bus stop. When they’re done with homework, they go outside with the Extended Day kids to play kickball or tennis or frisbee or…They never want to leave, even when I give them EXTRA time to play!

Today we left the school at five. I pulled up to the house. Hubby was already home. The girlchild jumped out to grab her library book and we were heading that way when my sister called. The kids were so boisterous that I drove right back home and tossed them out, going to the library on my own! I checked out 5 books and paid the late fees.

Then I headed to the grocery store. There were more people there than I’ve ever seen on a Monday night…hubby told me when I got home that it’s because of some sports thing.

Now I’m home. I have to grade the rest of the math activity papers and then I’ll be surfing around and checking out this and that online. Maybe I’ll be reading some blogs!

Smooches, all!