I was in gym class with my grade 7's the other day and the gym teacher had them play an interesting game to get them to run laps, do sit ups, push ups, burpies, etc... I can't recall exactly what it was called but it was something along the lines of "take one leave one". Basically, the gym teacher divided the class into 4 groups and each group would send a representative from their group to the center of the gym for the different rounds. The gym teacher stood in the center of the gym with a deck of playing cards. Each student took a card and looked at it... the number revealed how many of that exercise their group would have to do. However, sometimes he would tell them to switch cards and so everyone had to switch cards with someone else in the middle of the gym not knowing if they would get a "better" (or lower) number or not.
Anyways, the game worked well and had everyone running laps and exercising. He ended up doing it the entire class but I could see it even being used as a warm up.
Monday, May 28, 2018
Saturday, May 26, 2018
This Week At School
Ok... it will really be the last couple of weeks at school because I didn't post one of these last week... what can I say other than it was a long weekend and we were getting out of the big bad city for a bit.
Anyways...
Last week Friday I went with the grade 7's on a field trip. It was at a University listening to some speakers.
The question on all my lovely readers minds... no we still have not finished Underground to Canada. We were actually supposed to finish it yesterday but the assembly went quite a bit longer than I had anticipated. We probably have about 5 pages left to read. The good news is that because we had about a 10 minute class today I cancelled the end of the book assignment we were going to do because I want them to focus their writing energies on some persuasive essays they are writing.
So, persuasive essays... we're writing them. My original plan was to do some debates first and then write the essays but instead we did a couple of smaller whole class debates and we will finish off the year doing some group debates. The reasoning behind this is that I need their essays to be finished by the time I write their report cards.
Anyways, we have some really good topics that some students are choosing
- Should college athletes be paid to play
- Should there be no paparazzi
- Should marijuana be legalized
We just started picking topics and researching but hopefully these essays will start taking shape soon!
TUSC is still going well and we've had some pretty good presentations. A few that stick out are when "internet pick of the week" showed us Ariana Grande's website, when our demonstrator showed us how to throw a frisbee, the lasagna that the cook brought in, and the slime our science experimenter made for us.
Other than that... you already know about the big end of the day power outage that happened.
Today our school is competing in an ultimate tournament that I'm helping out in. Should be really hot so it's a good thing I forgot my one and only water bottle at school.
Next week the grade 7's are going to camp for a couple of nights and yours truly is going with them! It should be fun except that we are leaving Monday after school so I've got a full day of work and then we come back Wednesday after school and work the rest of the week.
Anyways...
Last week Friday I went with the grade 7's on a field trip. It was at a University listening to some speakers.
The question on all my lovely readers minds... no we still have not finished Underground to Canada. We were actually supposed to finish it yesterday but the assembly went quite a bit longer than I had anticipated. We probably have about 5 pages left to read. The good news is that because we had about a 10 minute class today I cancelled the end of the book assignment we were going to do because I want them to focus their writing energies on some persuasive essays they are writing.
So, persuasive essays... we're writing them. My original plan was to do some debates first and then write the essays but instead we did a couple of smaller whole class debates and we will finish off the year doing some group debates. The reasoning behind this is that I need their essays to be finished by the time I write their report cards.
Anyways, we have some really good topics that some students are choosing
- Should college athletes be paid to play
- Should there be no paparazzi
- Should marijuana be legalized
We just started picking topics and researching but hopefully these essays will start taking shape soon!
TUSC is still going well and we've had some pretty good presentations. A few that stick out are when "internet pick of the week" showed us Ariana Grande's website, when our demonstrator showed us how to throw a frisbee, the lasagna that the cook brought in, and the slime our science experimenter made for us.
Other than that... you already know about the big end of the day power outage that happened.
Today our school is competing in an ultimate tournament that I'm helping out in. Should be really hot so it's a good thing I forgot my one and only water bottle at school.
Next week the grade 7's are going to camp for a couple of nights and yours truly is going with them! It should be fun except that we are leaving Monday after school so I've got a full day of work and then we come back Wednesday after school and work the rest of the week.
Thursday, May 24, 2018
The Day the Power Went Out
Story time!
T'was the end of the day and I had just finished filling in my grade 7 class's homeroom teacher what we did that day and ventured upstairs to the staff room (because I'm on staff room clean up this month) when all of a sudden I hear just a bunch of screams from the hall. I also heard teachers so I assumed it was somewhat under control... which is when I ventured outside of the staff room only to realize that the power in the entire school had gone out. The staff room is on the 2nd floor and the lights were already out in there because the windows let in enough light so I hadn't even noticed.
Eventually I ventured down to the main floor which is where my classroom is and notice the hallway my room is down is very dark. Students are using their cell phone flashlights to help them find their stuff in the lockers and not bump into each other (it's a fairly narrow hallway). Despite all of this it was likely one of the more orderly locker breaks for that hallway... I didn't hear anyone screaming (and yes, I usually do). I even had one student ask if it was alright that they had their cell phone out to use as a flashlight (because they aren't allowed cell phones).
Anyways, without power there wasn't much I could do at school (my marking was already done) so I took the opportunity to leave pretty well right after school. I don't live far from school but I do live about 5 or 6 traffic lights from school... and unfortunately half of the traffic lights were out which meant my commute home likely tripled the time it took.
It turns out we were lucky it happened at the very end of the day... I know a couple of people that live in the area and their power wasn't restored for about 6 hours.
Funny enough this isn't the first time this has happened to me. A number of years ago I was subbing at another school in the area and at the end of the day the power had gone out in the entire school. The same thing happened there too... everyone was screaming in the halls. Because apparently when you use power it is definitely something to scream about.
T'was the end of the day and I had just finished filling in my grade 7 class's homeroom teacher what we did that day and ventured upstairs to the staff room (because I'm on staff room clean up this month) when all of a sudden I hear just a bunch of screams from the hall. I also heard teachers so I assumed it was somewhat under control... which is when I ventured outside of the staff room only to realize that the power in the entire school had gone out. The staff room is on the 2nd floor and the lights were already out in there because the windows let in enough light so I hadn't even noticed.
Eventually I ventured down to the main floor which is where my classroom is and notice the hallway my room is down is very dark. Students are using their cell phone flashlights to help them find their stuff in the lockers and not bump into each other (it's a fairly narrow hallway). Despite all of this it was likely one of the more orderly locker breaks for that hallway... I didn't hear anyone screaming (and yes, I usually do). I even had one student ask if it was alright that they had their cell phone out to use as a flashlight (because they aren't allowed cell phones).
Anyways, without power there wasn't much I could do at school (my marking was already done) so I took the opportunity to leave pretty well right after school. I don't live far from school but I do live about 5 or 6 traffic lights from school... and unfortunately half of the traffic lights were out which meant my commute home likely tripled the time it took.
It turns out we were lucky it happened at the very end of the day... I know a couple of people that live in the area and their power wasn't restored for about 6 hours.
Funny enough this isn't the first time this has happened to me. A number of years ago I was subbing at another school in the area and at the end of the day the power had gone out in the entire school. The same thing happened there too... everyone was screaming in the halls. Because apparently when you use power it is definitely something to scream about.
Monday, May 21, 2018
Weekend Teachers
My friend posted this online and I just had to post it on here...
It's from the book "Reading, Rhyming, and Rithmetic"
and honestly this poem seems like one that I would have read over and over again when I was in elementary school. What can I say... I was a sucker for a good rhyme.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
A Picture A Student Drew
Need I say more than the title?
I asked the student that drew it about the picture after she showed it to me... apparently it should be very obvious as to what is happening in it: the cats are at a disco party and Paul is outside in a money/wind machine trying to collect all those bills whilst wearing a crop top (because apparently it's what he requested to be wearing in the picture). I don't recall what the student said about the other 2 pets outside in the black box.
Monday, May 14, 2018
The Day All the Lockers Were a Buzzing
Last Wednesday in the province where I reside we had our "Alert Ready" test... basically a message sent to all cell phones that we would get in case of an emergency. We were scheduled to all get ours at 1:55 pm which meant afternoon classes would still be in session.
At my school students aren't supposed to carry their cell phones on them... they are to remain in their lockers at all times (unless it's lunch) so some teachers were using this as an opportunity to listen for what students were carrying their cell phones on them.
At the start of afternoon classes the principal made an announcement as to what would be happening and that we didn't need to worry about all these cell phones going off... she also mentioned that we would hear a lot of those cell phones from lockers.
It just so happened that I was on my prep this day at 1:55pm... when all of a sudden I heard a buzzing sound coming from the hallway. I was confused for about 15 seconds and then looked at the clock.
I never heard if any teachers were successful at figuring out which students were not leaving their phones in their lockers but I do know that neither I nor my husband received this fake emergency alert (although, my cell phone was turned off - because I don't see the need for keeping it on all day when I'm not going to be using it). But what I can say is that a lot of students at the middle school where I work did get the alert.
At my school students aren't supposed to carry their cell phones on them... they are to remain in their lockers at all times (unless it's lunch) so some teachers were using this as an opportunity to listen for what students were carrying their cell phones on them.
At the start of afternoon classes the principal made an announcement as to what would be happening and that we didn't need to worry about all these cell phones going off... she also mentioned that we would hear a lot of those cell phones from lockers.
It just so happened that I was on my prep this day at 1:55pm... when all of a sudden I heard a buzzing sound coming from the hallway. I was confused for about 15 seconds and then looked at the clock.
I never heard if any teachers were successful at figuring out which students were not leaving their phones in their lockers but I do know that neither I nor my husband received this fake emergency alert (although, my cell phone was turned off - because I don't see the need for keeping it on all day when I'm not going to be using it). But what I can say is that a lot of students at the middle school where I work did get the alert.
Saturday, May 12, 2018
This Week At School
Another week in Mrs. B's grade 7 ELA class...
We had our first TUSC meeting. When the chairperson asked who wasn't prepared about 5 people stood up. Honestly, I was expecting more and a couple of them really apologized to me in private about it so I'll take it. If this coming week we could only have about 2 people stand up that would be wonderful.
We watched a video about Harriet Tubman and almost got through it all. I think we have about 10 or 15 minutes left. The nice thing about this video is that despite it being in black and white and hard to follow the kids actually sat quietly today to watch it!.. I mean I even left the room a couple of times to check on students that couldn't sit quietly in the room. So that's a success!
We are past the halfway point in Underground to Canada. I'm really hoping that by the end of this next week we will maybe have a couple of chapters left.
In the other classes I help out in we played some battleship to help with coordinate pairs. That brought back some fond memories of when I taught grade 5/6 and my students loved making coordinate pairs pictures at the end of the year.
Anyways, the teacher had printed off some blank battleship pages and stuck them inside these dry erase folder type things which works WAY BETTER than just using a page protector.
Other than that I guess I just survived another week teaching middle school!
Oh, and the Jets won the series against Nashville so I finally got myself a white Jets shirt so I can be ready for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday's whiteout at school.
We had our first TUSC meeting. When the chairperson asked who wasn't prepared about 5 people stood up. Honestly, I was expecting more and a couple of them really apologized to me in private about it so I'll take it. If this coming week we could only have about 2 people stand up that would be wonderful.
We watched a video about Harriet Tubman and almost got through it all. I think we have about 10 or 15 minutes left. The nice thing about this video is that despite it being in black and white and hard to follow the kids actually sat quietly today to watch it!.. I mean I even left the room a couple of times to check on students that couldn't sit quietly in the room. So that's a success!
We are past the halfway point in Underground to Canada. I'm really hoping that by the end of this next week we will maybe have a couple of chapters left.
In the other classes I help out in we played some battleship to help with coordinate pairs. That brought back some fond memories of when I taught grade 5/6 and my students loved making coordinate pairs pictures at the end of the year.
Anyways, the teacher had printed off some blank battleship pages and stuck them inside these dry erase folder type things which works WAY BETTER than just using a page protector.
Other than that I guess I just survived another week teaching middle school!
Oh, and the Jets won the series against Nashville so I finally got myself a white Jets shirt so I can be ready for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday's whiteout at school.
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Presents for Mom
We were discussing what we would buy our mom's if we could get her anything in an elementary class I was in the other day and here were a few of the responses...
- There were a lot that would buy vacuums... specifically robotic ones which I guess helps free up some of mom's time.
- Various kinds of baking
- Flowers
Then one little girl pipes up saying she would buy her mom a Barbie. It was the cutest thing... I guess she wanted her mom to play Barbies with her and wanted her mom to have her very own Barbie. Sweet.
Monday, May 07, 2018
Substitute Teacher Blog Spotlight
Okay, this one isn't a substitute teacher blog but I came across it while searching for some substitute teacher blogs and I thought it would be good to share.
4 Tips to Maintain Your Sanity as a Substitute Teacher is exactly what it's saying it will give you... 4 tips (no more and no less) to help you out while you substitute teach. It also includes some good stories that may make you feel a little better about some of the substitute teaching experiences you've had.
Want a shout out for your lovely blog on here? Contact me! I only do one a month but I would love to acknowledge your blog one month soon!
Saturday, May 05, 2018
This Week At School
This week at school was much the same as previous weeks.
We did however manage to wrap up our playground projects and present them. There were some very creative commercials showing off their hypothetical playgrounds.
We also managed to start our TUSC "unit". My plan is to have them present once a cycle (we run on a 6 day cycle here so not quite once a week) which means we've got 6 TUSC meetings total. Usually, I would run it all year and everyone in class would get to do a job once. Since we only have 6 left I let them choose a bunch of jobs that they would like to have and I'm giving one based on that. I did tell them that they would be getting 6 different jobs and because I know them a bit now I am being selective as to who gets what job because I just know some of these kids acting as chairperson would not run the meeting so well. Anyways, we all have our first job selected and hopefully we'll all come to school on Wednesday prepared to participate!
From what I've heard we might be enjoying some lasagna and learning about Kijiji.
We're still reading Underground to Canada. I had to give them a good talking to this week because some of them can't seem to sit quietly while being read to and it just gets super disruptive. I've started sending those that are disruptive to the office to read the chapters on their own (usually it just means sending one there and the others get the message) and giving the rest of them something to work on while I read to keep them occupied. We did end up having a good class on Friday and if all goes according to plan for Monday's class we will end our morning with a film about the Underground Railroad.
My plans for next week are to dig out my old debate unit and get things organized with that so that we can hopefully start that the following week.
And... I thought I would share a picture of my classroom
It's nothing really too special and I don't intend to bring things from home to jazz up the place like I usually do. With only 2 months left of school left (and the fact that I actually don't teach out of that room all that often) I just don't think it's worth the effort this year. But this is it... where I've been spending most of my time lately.
PS. In case you haven't figured it out yet... my weekday posts are from a while ago that I've been saving up. Luckily, when I got my term I had about a months worth of posts ready to go so I haven't actually had to do much writing... but they are quickly running out. I am going to put in my best effort to keep up with the 3 times per week posting for as long as I can though... forgive me if it starts to dwindle to only a couple of posts a week soon.
Thursday, May 03, 2018
Wonder Quotes
I found this in a teachers classroom
From what I can gather the students change it every day to a new quote which I thought was cool.
I was wondering for a while how the students come up with all these quotes... I just assumed the teacher had bookmarked a quote website and somehow the students don't spend forever on it looking for the perfect one.
But at the end of the day I saw a student taking a quote out of this book
Basically, it has a quote for every day of the year.
I have no idea if the students were actually writing down the quotes for the day we were on (or maybe one nearby because they would miss a bunch of quotes over summer, Christmas, spring break, and weekends).
I just thought it was a cool idea that would be good at any grade level.
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