Today, was day 3 of 6 for PARCC testing. You read that right... 6 days of testing. Today is the final day of three days for English Language Arts. Fortunately, we have several days between now and starting our Math tests. I apologize in advance for the lack of pictures. Of course, if I took pictures during our PARCC test, that would not end well for me.
So, here goes my day....
5:45 - alarm
5:53 - 2nd alarm
6:05 - 3rd alarm, this is getting serious.
6:06 - talk myself into getting up. The kids get off the bus at 7. I don't have time to fuss around.
6:28 - I'm out the door with a breakfast shake in hand. Glad I have perfected my morning routine to be as streamlined as possible.
6:43 - arrive at school and realize I don't have my badge to get into the side door. Start to panic.... and then begin to pray that I just left it on my desk. Who needs a hassle of getting a replacement badge at the end of the school year. So I wait for another colleague to show up... because of course, my hands are full and I don't want to carry all this stuff to the front door of the school which seems to be a half mile away right now.
6:46 - get into the building and make it to my classroom. My badge is on my desk. Breath. Deep. Sigh. Of. Relief. I set up my SMARTboard and load the homeroom document that tells my homeroom students which teachers are requesting to see them this morning, and also get the SMART notebook open that I need for 1st period. I then set up the Shilling Shop (details below).
7:05 - the bell rings, and the kids rush in from the buses. I stand on hallway duty and give students permission when they come to see me about going to chorus, the media center, art, band, and other teachers. I've gotten good with remembering who is going where, so I don't need to write this down. 8 students out of the 32 have asked for permission.
7:15 - pull a student aside to mentor him. He hasn't been making good choices and between the principal and myself we are trying to help him right his ship. Still during hallway duty.
7:20 - homeroom starts. Administer 2 make up quizzes to students. Remind my homeroom of today's testing schedule since their class schedule is all out of whack. Discuss make up work with 5 students, and give permission to 6 more to go to the places they need to go to. Discuss PARCC testing briefly with the IRT.
7:37 - begin 1st period. Since we only have 45 minutes instead of our normal 90 minutes, I am not finding success in adjusting my schedule. Therefore, we finish the work we were trying to accomplish during the last class period now. We're working on starting systems, so I have my students looking at balance and puzzles to find the value of different items. I'm also having two of my students run the Shilling Shop.
8:22 - students go off to specials after dropping their items to their 4th period class. It is a crazy transition period. I review my PARCC testing manual to make sure I have the appropriate directions for today marked and ready to go. I check into my testing location (the media center) and check on my computers. My testing group is 58, so I need to make sure everything is ready to go now, so there will be minimal surprises later.
9:11 - it's 3rd period, but I have my 4th period kiddos. Since my Common Core students are needing some more work on samples and populations along with ratios, I have them working on a sampling task from Scholastic. While they are working on this task in partners or as an individual, I am running the Shilling Shop.
10:00 - students move to their testing groups. No one is testing in my room so it becomes one big locker. Various students come in to drop off their backpacks and electronics in my classroom knowing that my room will be locked during testing. Some of these students aren't even mine, they just know I will let them do this.
10:05 - I report to the media center and start my testing session with my 58 students. Once I get all students started, I spend the next 110 minutes walking around the media center making sure students are working. I think about how I need a new pair of sneakers. As students finish, I help them to log out of the system and instruct them to sit patiently until the time is finished or the last person has completed the test. Since we have set aside 3 full class periods, once testing has finished, students watch a movie on the SMARTboard in the media center to finish the remaining of the class time once the testing materials are once again secured.
12:27 - we transition to recess. I have never seen a group of students who are so excited to be in the bus parking lot. They run, socialize with each other and play with the few sport balls they have access to.
12:41 - we line up to go into lunch. I hand off my classroom key to a student who opens my door for my lunch group daily and I help move the rest of the students into the cafeteria. I spend the rest of this period eating lunch with approximately 40 students in my classroom. These students don't want to eat in the cafeteria with the other 300 students for various reasons. Currently, there's a DS group who play Mario Cart against each other, another group who plays a card game called Kings Corners, and others who just sit and read books or socialize with each other.
1:11 - Lunch is over and it's 8th period. I see my last class and repeat the plans I had with my 4th period class - the Scholastic task and running Shilling Shop.
2:05 - it's time to send them home on a bus. Woah. Busy day.
2:07 - I pack up the Shilling shop, clean up my desk and get my materials ready for tomorrow. I update my classroom website. These tasks are much easier to type then they are to actually accomplish!
5:17 - I am walking out the door to go home.
5:30 - arrive at home, sit on the couch, fall asleep.
6:10 - husband wakes me up, God love this man, he made dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs.
6:30 - clean up from dinner. Return to sitting on the couch and check my twitter feed. Fill my inbox with tweets that I want to follow up on at work. This is becoming a habit.
7:00 - watch last week's Designated Survivor with my husband, fall asleep before the end....
9:00 - My husband wakes me up and tells me to go to bed. I think he is tired of trying to watch tv while I am snoring. I go up stairs, get ready for bed, put on Designated Survivor (again!) and fall asleep again.....
As promised above, here's more information about the Shilling Shop. I hand out class money called Shillings. Students get this money by doing different class jobs, getting 100% on quizzes, helping other students, doing things that better our school community. This classroom money system is something that only I do. At least once per marking period (usually twice or three times), I will set up a Shilling Shop where students can purchase items with their Shillings. I have a variety of rewards - sheets of stickers, pages of coloring books from the new popular relaxing coloring books, fun pencils and erasers, frisbees, stress balls, single packs of oreos, snack sizes of other cookie packs, snack size pringles, Halloween size candy, and a few other items that change each time (like homework passes). Students spend their Shillings or decide to save their Shillings if something catches their eye. The prices range from 50 to 300 Shillings, because we use 10, 20 and 100 Shillings in our room.
And please know, since I fell asleep, this post has been posted and submitted a day late :( I started it with the best of intentions during the day, but time just wasn't on my side.`
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