You not supposed to protect criminal passengers!

Well ladies and gentleman, today has proved that I do not completely fail as a teacher. Today went much better then yesterday (thank goodness, because I would not be able to handle another bad day). I was up pretty late again last night trying to get it all ready (I really need to start doing this all earlier!). My goal is to be in bed by 8:30 tonight! It was kind of an over-cast yucky day today, but not bad. We had our typical staff meeting this morning, nothing exciting. Today we also had spelling, I had put all the spelling words on the board and asked the kids to put them into 4 groups. They could group them any way they want, but they had to be able to explain why they put them together. They were pretty quite and did a fairly good job. Some were a bit more confused in the beginning since they have not done anything like that before. I would have liked to give an example set with different words before, possibly, this may have helped explain what they were doing. I allowed 2 students to move the words on the SmartBoard and show the class what groups they had. I also helped lead the Guided Reading group today and other then some not following along that went pretty well. I was supposed to plan something for writing, but at 10:30 last night when I had nothing, I gave up. So Adam decided to just let them free write for 30 minutes. They actually did a really good job for about 25 minutes. Some of the kids that usually don't pay attention or write much got really into the projects they were working on.

Today we also had circle/philosophy time. They are supposed to have it every week, but we only do it sometimes. Today we sat in a circle and talked about different issues and the kids gave a thumbs up, thumbs down opinion. We talked about eating junk food and school uniforms. We then started talking about letting people come to Australia who aren't from Australia. Some kids said they shouldn't because they could be bad and some said they should because of multiculturalism. It was interesting to see the kids opinions, and some more the parents opinions. Some kids had really good points and some just didn't think before they spoke. It was interesting that they are allowed to talk about stuff like that in school, if we ever tried to have a conversation like that back home, I feel like parents would get really upset. Adam said that they didn't do it at any other school he had been too either.

I spent most of lunch getting everything ready for my lesson that I was teaching this afternoon. I was going to do it in the morning, but we had our staff meeting so I couldn't get anything ready except for spelling. I wrote up some information sheets (of which I would have liked to add to the WebQuest yesterday. I gave the kids about 5 minutes to read and finish answering their questions and then 5 minutes to share with their table. We then went over all of the groups and made a comparison chart. They did a really good job helping fill out the chart, minus some not paying attention. I had to stop quite a few times to make sure they were not talking. We looked at some pictures of the Native American tribes and used a map to find where they were located. Some actually knew where a couple states were, which was great. We had just enough time and went right to the end of the day, I was really worried that I was going to end super early.

After work, I caught the 501 back home and let me tell you the 501 was quite a site today. A few stops after I got on there was this lady that gets on and starts to get mad at another passenger. There is one seat by itself near the front and then 6 seats that run on the side of the front of the bus designated for disabled for elderly passengers. Well this lady told the one sitting in the seat to move and she refused. So she started yelling at her and saying some very inappropriate words. The bus driver had to get out of his seat and ask her to sit down and explain that she had just as much as right to sit there (she was kind of old too). The lady got really upset and was ranting about complaining to the bus company and the stupid lady. She got up and started copying down the bus drivers information and he let out a bit of a chuckle and then she just went off about how he is supposed to be protecting good passengers and he is not supposed to be protecting criminal passengers. It was very entertaining and took about 5 minutes of the bus ride, but absolutely worth the experience. I couldn't help but laugh during some of it.

I stopped to pick up stamps today and let me tell you they are not cheap! Some of you that I said would get postcards, may get them shipped from the Los Angeles Airport haha. I also learned that the post office does not have sticky stamps. I was given stamps that I have to lick! I haven't licked a stamp in YEARS! I probably won't end up licking them anyway, but still. Australia needs to catch up and stick it!