Volleyball

I am now doing the official scoring for the girls volley ball team. Tournament scoring is a little different from my days as a high school v-ball player. The main thing that is hard for me to score mentally is a net serve (hitting the net on the serve but the ball goes over) is played and not re-served. Only one mishap and that's when one of the teams served out of order. I had to figure out what to do and they started before I had a chance to check that they had the right person in....much of the game my head is down. We caught the mistake and it didn't affect the outcome of the game....sadly my school's teams (7th and 8th) lost their matches...but it was fun. The next home game is not until January.

may all who compete be blessed with the ability to lose gracefully

ughhh!

1. just started working out at a new gym....with a trainer (two free sessions included in cost of membership) and decided to buy more trainer time to get me more motivated and focused.
2. started new trimester and already have students not turning in homework on time and instead choosing to fail.
3. was observed for the first time by the principal...the students were pretty good and there were some suggestions
4. christmas break begins friday afternooon.

feeling blessed is just that, a feeling, the blessings are always there....

Reading

a friend of mine had this in her post so I am passing it along:

From Paul's Thinking Place: "I have no clue what a "meme" is, but I saw this one on Mark Ostreicher's blog, and thought it was pretty cool. Most of the time, I find reading other people's "memes" somewhat interesting at the best, silly at worst, but this one actually struck my fancy for what it might say about what people are reading... and authors are writing. So here are the rules:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog, along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest!"

My nearest book with more than 123 pages happens to be the teacher's edition of one of my text books. Unfortunately, there's not much there, but here it is.

Discuss in pairs or small groups.
1. How are the two science experiments similar to a mystery story? how are they different?
2. would you prefer to be a detective or a scientist?

I know not great reading. On the other hand the closet non-text book is Kokoro by Natsume Soseki :

"All I wanted to know at that moment was that Sensei was still alive. Sensei's past, his dark past that he promised to tell me about, held no interest for me then. But I could not find what I was seeking, and I refolded the letter in exasperation. I returned to the doorway of my father's room to see how he was doing."

I think I will send this to the staff; see what we as a school come up with.

Honesty and Middle schoolers

kind of a weird day at schoool today. I was supposed to be observed by the principal today but with so many other things going on he couldn't come in....all the computers and phone lines outside the school were down son attendence was out of wack as were any notifications about things that were happening...and one of my students decided to write on my apple with a marker. I kind of know who it was but instead took the time to make it a "teachable moment" about honesty and self responsibility tied in with the make your day program. Hope something takes. Tomorrow the principal should be in, i have a meeting with the trainer at the new gym i just joined, and there's one more week until the christmas break.....

oh, and the school....just a picture of the one my grandmother went to back in 1917

may I be blessed with patience.......

the new trimester begins

Finally getting a feeling that I know what I am doing and I know how I want to be doing it. Yesterday my 7th grade team met and talked for about an hour about the goals for our students and some of the across the board expectations. I kind of needed to be in more contact since my schedule barely allows me the time to meet with them. I think I will write up a trimester plan.

Pretty sure there will be students who don't understand their schedules or who want to make changes in their electives on Monday. Fortunately there isn't much of a change for my students. Some groups, same books, better design. My level 2 students are starting a new section on growth. We'll start with units of measurement and then move on to comparisons. For grammar we will still be using adjectives but also going further and making comparisons using " ~er than" . We'll also be working on sequencing and some conjunctions.

My level 3 students three students will be reading a fictional account of Lewis and Clark with Sacagawea and then learning about maps...relief maps in particular and measurement. We'll also be doing some sequencing and the reading strategy of visualizing. I don't think we will have a project for this section because my goal is to begin new units after the Winter Holidays.

feeling blessed with an abundance of little things to take care of....