Better Attitude

I think that word spread that I'll also send students to O-Class after school. Two of the students I sent on Monday acted much better on Tuesday. I gave them part two of adverbs and most of them understood what they needed to do. I'll give them the Holt adverb worksheet on Wednesday and allow them to refer to their previous worksheets and notes. If this works out better than the previous Holts, I'll probably do it this way from now on. Only one person did the plot outline. Some said they didn't understand it, however, Miss Reese commented that many of them use that as an excuse to not do their homework. Most of them didn't write their suspense stories over the weekend because of the same reason and I reminded them that last Friday, when we were in the big circle, I asked them, "Do you understand what you need to do? Does anyone have any questions?" They have a timed writing exam on Thursday. The prompt is to write a persuasive essay either for or against their family moving to Las Vegas. I've been assigning in-class writing assignments that reflect personal experiences emphasizing their need for detail. Their last writing assignment was to write a persuasive letter to me, explaining why I shouldn't give them homework over this weekend. There were two exceptional letters, one used transitions, which I have mentioned but not gone over yet. She even signed off on her letter, "Attentively," which really impressed me. I gave them and went over a handout on formal essay writing and we'll be going over an autobiographical narrative Wednesday. The exam on "The Most Dangerous Game" is on Friday. They're in for a rude awakening if they didn't read, look over, or reread the story.

I met my supervisor and I'm looking forward to his evaluations. Miss Reese has expressed how well I've been handling the students, but it will be good to hear even more feedback. Sometimes I have self-doubts about what I'm doing.

In the 8th grade class we read up to the last couple of pages of Flowers for Algernon. We had discussed the differences on campus between the "smart students" and the "too cool to study students" and the ones in-between. We compared them to the different intelligences portrayed in the story. I'll have to ask them if they know any mentally challenged students on campus or in their neighborhood. I'd never thought about discussing that with them. I had them do the same persuasive letter, and though they made some good points, their letters weren't as detailed as the 9th. (So I think I'm doing something right in the first class.) It was hard to motivate the 8th graders today because they ran in P.E. and were very sluggish.