Teaching Randomness

In no particular order...

1. Sixth-grade girl A who I had last year will henceforth be referred to as "Princess." She is convinced she is one, and is treated like one at home. I considered several varieties of animals that attach themselves too you, in honor of the day she latched onto Cat and had to big wiggled off, but they all sounded gross.

2. Fourth-grade boy A will remain A unless I get another boy named A, or if the other A comes back from home teaching. At that point, I'll reconsider.

3. New-girl A's nickname is pending my actually meeting her, but for right now, she's NewA.

4. I went through a truly staggering amount of laminate the last couple of weeks. Plus, the two rolls of crunchy Velcro + one roll of soft Velcro I thought I ordered somehow became 3 rolls of crunchy Velcro.

5. E. may lose her chair, if Home Teaching A. goes to middle school like his mom wants. So, I bought a bright pink shirt and put it on the chair. While the chair is good for E's posture (she has really low tone...very common in kids with Down syndrome) I think it also helped her orient herself in space and find "her" chair. Hopefully she'll associate flourescent pink with "her" chair so that I can put it on a regular classroom chair if needed.

6. My staffing situation isn't as scary as I thought...only two new names on there, and one is a sub for T, who had surgery. S. is back from her surgery...so we'll see how rusty she is. There's one 15 minute portion of the day when I have three adults in my class! Besides me! (That's almost overkill and almost a bad thing, except that it makes it a perfect time for J. to take her lunch.)

7. My classroom is nearly done -- down to one table of clutter. Once I finish symbolifying our first poem, I've got the first week taken care of. Not as far ahead as I wanted to be, but oh well.

8. We had a (boring) PE training today that had even the general education teachers worried about injuries if we played the activities as described. Suffice it to say, E + touch football = badness...so it'll have to be modified. Oh well.

9. The text of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is done -- all 30 chapters! Yay! (That takes us right to Christm...err...winter break.) I haven't done questions or anything yet, because I can't quite predict what level of questions, etc., the class will actually need.

10. I started switchifying Charlie today (mostly for E, but M was beginning to read the words last year, and I hope that'll continue), and finished the About the Author and Pre-Writing sections. I also switchified our vocabulary practice for the next 2 weeks.

11. My wrists hurt. A lot. I've resisted it 'cause it's expensive, but it may be time to trade in my trusty Mircosoft Natural split keyboard -- which I've had since 1994...well, I've owned 2 of them over that time period, but they were identical -- for the (gulp) more expensive Kinesis keyboard.

12. Patrick is traumatized because he's convinced the book is called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory because that was the name of the movie.

Also? Wank ensues in my family again...we think. No one really knows for sure.