Jan 30 and 31

After the four snow days that we had, I really felt that the kids were going to be hard to control.  But surprisingly they were not that terrible.  I guess they needed the structure that school provides for them.  As far as preparation for these two days, I felt like there wasn't terrible amount of preparation that was different.  I do believe that I had to change things up a bit to accommodate the week off and refresh their minds.  For math, we reviewed questions and I went around asking and checking their work to see if they still understood the questions.  Most people did well on the test.  Some that usually do well, did not.  But when walking around they understood the problems and never came to me expressing the need for extra help or clarifications.  Thursday's vocab preparation was to finish their vocab.  Which is where I am struggling.  It is hard to get the students to finish their sentences or google doc.  I don't feel that it should take that long but it does.  I felt  reading and social studies was already planned and prepped because of the bio cube and you finishing up Latin America.  The one thing that did throw me off, was how much you were involved with the Essays and then the email had me teaching introductory paragraphs.  I felt comfortable with teaching this..we just ran out of time and didn't have time to work on our paragraphs.  I did have to look at resources before school and during prep to help me get to this comfort level.

Each day I am trying new things in terms of management.  I feel they look to me as the nice one (not saying that you are the mean one, but they know that you're the ultimate authority in the classroom).  I am going to implement bean bag time and not let them take advantage of using the bean bags all the time.  I am also going to monitor this a bit more closely on who is always on the bean bag. I feel quite frustrated that I can tell them to work quietly and 5 minute late the noise level remains.  It seems to be the entire class and I can't pin point just one person to punish for Mrs. Steele's recess club.  Deanne told me to hold the whole class if it is a problem,  but how does that work if it is the math groups?  I am using the positive reinforcement often but I feel the sixth graders like the idea of tickets and scrabble cards, but it isn't changing their behavior.  What more can I do to gain their respect of working silently?

I am eager to begin the book clubs, but nervous as this is my first unit that I created that I am teaching.