Monday

It was a little hard to come back to teaching after a four day weekend. I went over the essay model with the 9th graders.
"Why are we reading this again?"
"Because I only received five rough drafts last week and obviously some of you need to look this model over again."
I love it when students proclaim how smart they are because I can reply,"Well, you weren't smart enough to write a rough draft." I told them their final drafts were due on Friday, but I'm having second thoughts about that, so I might just give them until Monday. Maybe I'll have them write a persuasive letter as to why I should give them the extra time. We went over "The Sniper" and I put them into groups to answer the interpretation questions at the end of the story. One group failed miserably, but I was impressed at some students who really worked hard to find the answers. However, after coming back from a four day weekend, the students were a little unruly. But on the up-side, I did assign detention to four students.

The 8th graders worked on handouts on the story "Mrs. Flowers." We also talked about how they should write their movie review. Some days these students are great, or they're great during one part of the class and disruptive for the other part. It doesn't help that the 9th graders who have detention are in the same classroom because each group tries to impress the other by being difficult. I remember sort of being like that at that age too. How much I annoyed my teachers then, I'm receiving the backlash now.