John speaks from my heart

"Ok, so flower power didn't work. So what? We start again." - John Lennon

This is how I feel this Christmas break. Maybe peace, love and happiness isn't working as an approach in my classroom, but whatever it takes, these kids are going to learn this semester.

CHRISTMAS BREAK YOU ARE FINALLY HERE

Everything I'm totally excited about in the next two weeks:
- the semester is OVER!
- going back home for the holidays
- getting to visit Ian's family for New Year's
- getting to see friends back in the LO :)
- NO MORE 8TH GRADERS!!!
- getting to watch hockey again
- did I mention the lack of 8th graders??
- someone actually listened to my complaint, and I'm FINALLY getting some Read 180 PD when I get back

Things I am NOT excited about:
Baton Rouge high: in the 70s VS. :
- Glen Burnie high: in the low 50s
- Western PA high: tundra.

Yeah, I miss this

I'm teaching the theme, for the story we're currently reading, 'you don't know what you have until it's gone.'

Let me make a text-to-self connection:
I MISS FINALS WEEK!! Yes, I miss working at the library until 3am, and walking home in the freezing cold. I miss staying up all night, cramming in everything at the last minute - 10+ page papers, etc. DONUT HEAVEN, late nights with my sisters, delirious lack-of-sleep-induced conversations (writing a paper about the Kosovo war - "ooh! I think I'm going to add the Beach Boys song in here. you know the one? 'Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya... down to Kosovo...' Wait, that's totally not it, is it?"), did I mention late nights at the library, the looks of understanding between two people who have been up for 24+ hours straight walking into an 8am final, and the sharing the sheet enjoyment of finally being DONE.

Most of all, I miss all those people to whom this post will only make any sense.

Like or as?

Ok, so maybe my life's vocation is not being a teacher, but I should definitely go into the profession of professional lesson planning. If my students weren't such little monsters sometimes, they would have so much fun in my class!

Like tomorrow this is the activity we're using to learn about similies:

I have a series of 6 really short poems. Each poem has at least one simile in it. I'm going to pass out the first poem to all the students. They have to identify the simile and tell me what two things are being compared. Once they finish, they bring it up to the front of the class, I check it and give them the next poem. The person who finishes all of them first and correctly gets a prize.

Story Elements: The Musical

http://flocabulary.com/fivethings/

WHYYYYYY DID I NOT FIND THIS VIDEO AT THE BEGINNING OF MY UNIT!?!?!

Oh well, good thing I'm doing a story elements wrap-up tomorrow for the short story we're reading. Between this video and the two songs I'm playing to describe the themes of the story, tomorrow is going to be a very musical day!

Snow lies

This is how ridiculous my students are:

They wanted to listen to this song that I'm saving for my lesson on theme on Monday. I told them no, I'm saving it for Monday, you can hear it then. One of my students then said to me with as much attitude she could muster, 'we're not even going to be here Monday because it's going to snow and they'll shut school down.' Although I know how ridiculous this statement is, I humored her saying, 'Ok, we'll listen to it on Tuesday then.' To which she replied, 'we're not going to be here Tuesday either because school will still be closed because of snow.' Regardless of what I said about the weather forecast, she was obnoxiously insistent that it was going to rain on Sunday (which is true) and turn into snow Monday night.

By the way, the high for Monday: 68. The low? 42. 10 degrees above freezing.

Sometimes my students seriously make me want to pull my hair out.