9/24 - Still finding our balance...

Today was good – the 6th graders that had finished their poems the week before jumped into starting their self portrait pieces, manipulating a photo I took of them the week before. The other half of the class did their poems, to much success as well – I’m really impressed with how well they turned out, and the way that the students seem to take to them. I owe William Ayers a big thank you for that idea! Nice to feel like I am able to build on the literacy and writing stuff I did with them last year.



My 1st/2nd group is still giving me a little trouble – we’ll find our rhythm soon enough, I’m sure, still just a tough group. The kids that finished their poem got to re-write them today on a big piece of construction paper and illustrate them – turned out really nice. The other kids that didn’t finish or were struggling a bit I had work on their poems – gave me a bit more one on one time with them that way. Still was a little chaotic, not as smooth of a class as I’d like, but we are slowly getting there. Have to be the ‘toughest’ on them out of all my teams, tough in the sense of keeping it really consistent and giving them a bit more involved work early on than I normally would, but in this case I think it’ll help them get focused and settled enough so we can be more flexible and loose as the year moves on.

My fifth graders did okay – they too started their self portraits, with a few of them finishing up their poems. They were just a bit scattered, still having problems with the writing part with them, need to bust them out of their mold.