Reflection Day 2

Literacy:
Today we worked again on the sound "sh" and brainstormed all of the words that have that sound. Then, we put them into categories based on their spellings. We had sh, tion, ssion, and random ways to spell. I read again to them from The Jumping Tree and then they worked on their glossaries on powerpoint.

History:
The students worked again on their webquest. They seemed fairly engaged and worked hard for most of the block. I've begun to do exit slips or daily quizzes to keep the accountable for their work. One of my tough guys refused to do it however and returned to the second half of class late. I had to talk with him and encourage him about being smart and not lazy and that my main goal was for him to think. He got to work and worked for about the last 10 minutes of class. They seemed really engaged with the webquest.
I heard them making comments when they learned something new. Their exit slip was to write something new they had learned. I'm thinking about presenting what they wrote to the whole class.

Thoughts:

I didn't have major discipline or behavior issues today and enjoyed all of my classes...yes there are days when I don't enjoy my classes. By the time I got my second round of freshmen at the end of the day I wasn't really ready for their energy...but they were awesome.

My students are beginning to engage more on the blog, I hope that they get used to the process and it become a more meaningful means of engagement.

I've been sick for two days and am exhausted. Its hard to be on your feet all day when you don't feel well. But, the students are usually really good to me and play nice on those days. Usually during the year when I'm sick I can back off a little more because the kids know the routines and are really more self directed.

I planned a little this morning during my plan and I think I should be OK for tomorrow. I finally got textbooks so, I may use half of the history block tomorrow to brainstorm creative, functional, and useful ways to read a textbook. I have a few textbooks in Spanish, the head of the Social Studies department gave them to me, but I don't think that many of my Spanish speakers can read in Spanish either?! I'm going to do some more graphic and cloze activities with them tomorrow to make sure that they got what they were supposed to the past few days.