Day 229

August 3 Monday

I hate that I have to move back to a morning schedule! I layed down around 2am or so and I was still awake past 4am. I don't know why. I just couldn't get to sleep. I kept tossing and turning. So I made it through the day on less than 3 hours of sleep.

I didn't start getting tired till around 8:30pm. It was too close to bedtime to take a nap, but I took one anyway. Hopefull it wasn't a bad idea!

Today I was super busy. I got all of my tests graded. Most of the students didn't do well on the tests. I think my lowest grade was a 30. Most of the grades were in the 30-50 range. I had a few people who made good grades. My brand new student who has only been in my class twice made 100 on the writing test! We haven't covered any of that material since she has been in class so her writing ability is really good. At least I know where she stands with writing. (now I just need to get her to talk in class! She says very little!) When I'm not there the students will take shortcuts. They are suppose to find a mistake and rewrite the sentence. A lot of them just wrote the correction. I took off 10 points for not writing the sentence. They know if I was there I'd make them write the sentence. They might have thought that the sub would be grading them and that he'd be lenient.

I only had 3 students who were absent so I'll have to give 3 makeup tests. I'm almost done averaging all the grades for the month of July. I looked at my list to see who had done all of their homework. I have 14 children who did all of their homework for the month. I printed out little certificates online. I am going to give them a choice of candy or some little things like notebooks, pencils, erasers.

My first class was good. The 2 boys were absent so only the 2 girls were in class. They did a good job. We finished up a unit and reviewed. They asked to play a game and since we were at a good stopping point I let them play hangman.

My 2nd class is usually my problem class. The girl was absent so I had 3 10-11 year old boys in class. Today they were sweet little angels. I rewarded their good behavior by letting them play a game. Maybe they are learning that if they are well behaved that they will get to have a little free time. I punished them 4 classes in a row for bad behavior by not letting them play a game. They were all paying attention and participating. I was shocked. The Korean teacher said something to them before class in Korean. I don't know what she said. Maybe she told them to behave. They played the ghost game. They would turn off the lights and then one person would close their eyes and have to walk around the room to find the other students. The little 10 year old kept running into my podium. He was okay. He didn't get hurt although he smacked himself right in the mouth about 3 times. They all said that their cd wasn't working in their computer. I don't know if I believe them. I think they just want an excuse not to do their homework.

My 3rd class was good. We just finished a writing unit. Today our objective was writing about "have to". 'I have to....', 'she has to...', he had to...., etc. I like the book that I'm using for that class. Its my highest level class and they are learning about how to form paragraphs and writing outlines. They seem to grasp the material very well.