I cannot believe tomorrow is already Thursday. Monday morning I was greeted at the door by a HUGE cockroach. I freaked out. My students wanted me to kill it and I refused to go by it and made my coop get it out of the way because there was no way I was touching or going near it. We finished up our unicorn art on Monday to finish up our author of the week—Aaron Blabey by closing it out with the story “Thelma the Unicorn” to show students the importance of being unique and not following others. The kiddos have been busy this week with Reading testing. Students reading test here are pretty lengthy so we break it up over the course of the whole week. Students are given running records, phonemic awareness, sight words, and spelling tests. Testing is not used within the classroom at all other than the reading and math, which happens once each term. As a student, tests were always something I struggled due to the stress and anxiety that came along with them. However, the approach that is taken here when it comes to testing is much more relaxed. First, we don’t even mention to students that they are being tested because what they are being tested on is material that we cover on a daily basis anyways, so why stress them out with even saying the word “test.” Students are tested one on one with a teacher and the rest of the students are outside playing and discovering.
Sickness has been traveling around our classroom like no other. Monday we had 9 students out and on Tuesday we had 5 out. Chicken Pox, Flu and Slap Cheek have been going around our room. I have never heard of Slap Cheek before—so those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it is a contagious rash where your cheeks turn all red and you form rashes throughout your body. However, here’s the real downfall about it—you are only contagious before you see any signs! So once you have the rash and the red cheeks, you are no longer contagious. It is the weirdest thing I have heard of!! I have been washing my hands nonstop and taking lots of vitamins because I CANNOT, CANNOT get sick!!!!!
Today, we took a group of students into the city for an event that introduced students to different ways of transportation and the safety of each. This was such a cool experience because most of the kiddos we took have never been on a train and have never been to the city. Every school in Auckland brought a group of students to this event either by train, bus, ferry, walking or car, so it was cool for the kiddos to meet others their age and explore the city. We did a scavenger hunt through the city to explore each of these ways of transportation. We were able to go on the police and harbor rescue boats, helicopter simulator, and fire rescue truck. The event was only suppose to last until 1:30, but ended getting done 20 minutes late and we had to catch the 2:00 train back into Swanson to get the kiddos back in time. We were those crazy people on the streets sprinting through the city trying to make the train. Thank goodness we did—with a minute to spare. We definitely had our running shoes on.
Next week we have our big Athletics Day where were travel to the stadium and compete in all of our track and field events that we have been practicing this term. This is something students look forward to every year and I have been told they get extremely competitive. I am in charge of the Long Jump—wish me luck—the staff was forewarned that I have no idea what I am doing. I’ll catch on quickly…no worries. I’ll keep you all updated of course though!
