Day 105- "Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming." Finding Nemo

Today was a black day, so it was my easiest day of the week. With our weather forecast, this may be my only black day this week. We are supposed to get 6-8 inches of snow today into tonight, which probably means we will get our 7th snow day of the year. I don't think in my previous nine years in education I have had seven snow days total, yet we are on target for our 7th in the last month. Alas, I have digressed.

In Read 180 today, I worked with the kids on constructed response and citing evidence from a text after analyzing the question. Typically they would have to also explain their answer as well, but we discussed how sometimes, as in the case our reading and questions, the explanation was in the citations. They have done well and are improving, but I fear when they get a real test and the reading isn't interesting, they will balk at the work. I see this trend in class, and I would be foolish to believe it would change for a test. Hopefully by then, the constant training will kick in.

My blended class met today, and we had a great discussion over the first part of chapter three of Slaughter-House Five. I am really proud of this group as they are working hard on this book despite how confusing it can be. One thing I am doing this semester with all my classes is grading their work immediately and putting in zeros for missing work that same day. Since they are having daily annotations and study guides on My Big Campus for blended, they quickly see their grade changing. Since they are about 80 school days from graduation, this seems to be having an effect on their work quality and completion. The study guides are not easy, and they are not something they can find the answers to anywhere but in their reading, so I am greatly encouraged by how they are trekking through this book.

I had quite a few kids come to make up quizzes in iPass today, so it was a little bit of a full house. Prep was very productive and didn't require any Office Space style meetings with the copy machine. In my Read 180 lab class we continued to work on writing one single persuasive paragraph. This is a brutal struggle with these kids. We have been writing all year in this lab, but it is something they obviously have not done much of and based on their schedules, they don't do it any other class either. I feel at times I am starting at the very beginning with them, and I mean lower elementary level writing. Just have to keep swimming.