It's official. Yes, I am counting the days, and yes, I am including the teacher workshop day on Monday the 14th. Of course I realize it's seven days with kids, but I'm counting every day.
Today was the crux of the countdown start. The students were typing a letter they wrote yesterday. As I glanced at computer screens and some of the final drafts, I couldn't help but be discouraged. It's the end of the year and the seventh graders can't capitalize the letter i, the first word of a sentence or proper nouns. I'm not even talking about complete sentences, coherence, forming and supporting an opinion.
The day wasn't a complete loss. First, they didn't really have much time to edit or revise. Second, a colleague reminded me that there's only seven days left. They're not "at their best." Most importantly, I was able to teach something today. I was able to teach a student how to snap gum.
It started with my asking a student to spit out his gum. The conversation moved to the fact that some people are bad gum chewers making it easy to catch them chewing gum. I admitted that I was a horrible gum chewer because I snap my gum. One boy said he didn't know how to snap his gum. After I tried to explain it, I realized it was something that one really needed to witness. The student who had to spit out his gum supplied gum to me and the other student, and the lesson began. Of course I let him put another piece in since he was kind enough to give gum away for the lesson. Maybe this is all I should expect out of the remaining seven days, however the Media Literacy unit starts tomorrow (incredible if I do say so myself).
Today was the crux of the countdown start. The students were typing a letter they wrote yesterday. As I glanced at computer screens and some of the final drafts, I couldn't help but be discouraged. It's the end of the year and the seventh graders can't capitalize the letter i, the first word of a sentence or proper nouns. I'm not even talking about complete sentences, coherence, forming and supporting an opinion.
The day wasn't a complete loss. First, they didn't really have much time to edit or revise. Second, a colleague reminded me that there's only seven days left. They're not "at their best." Most importantly, I was able to teach something today. I was able to teach a student how to snap gum.
It started with my asking a student to spit out his gum. The conversation moved to the fact that some people are bad gum chewers making it easy to catch them chewing gum. I admitted that I was a horrible gum chewer because I snap my gum. One boy said he didn't know how to snap his gum. After I tried to explain it, I realized it was something that one really needed to witness. The student who had to spit out his gum supplied gum to me and the other student, and the lesson began. Of course I let him put another piece in since he was kind enough to give gum away for the lesson. Maybe this is all I should expect out of the remaining seven days, however the Media Literacy unit starts tomorrow (incredible if I do say so myself).
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