What a Great Day

I took off Wednesday from school so that I could work on my National Boards. Some of you might want to check the last three posts if you missed it. It was a super productive day. I had about five things on my to do list- Yes, I make to do lists on my days off, too.

1) Sign up for the assessment - got this completed in about thirty minutes
2) Choose my 15 minutes of video for the Social Studies section-this took a little longer
3) Transcribe the 15 minute video- this took a while, writing down what each kid said for 15 minutes
4) Finish entry two- Working from early morning through lunch, I finished this by 8:30
5) Plan my science lesson to video- I woke up yesterday morning and did this from about 4:30-6:30

While Wednesday was a good day Thursday proved to be a great day. I got to school early with a fresh lesson in hand. But having a few road blocks the past two weeks with the passing of my assistant's mother and the training of a sub assistant after almost six weeks alone is a little daunting on a person and especially while implementing curriculum that is out of the norm...meaning we normally don't teach science explicitly we teach reading, language, and math. So to do a true Science, something else would have to be given up...I chose yesterday to give up reading groups and do a little experimentation.
When I got to school all the teachers were nay sayers---imagine that the day before the day you get out for spring break. Everyone was concerned I had chosen such a day to video...and even worse I would choose to wait until the afternoon to video...everyone knows kids get wilder each hour closer to getting out for spring break. But you see in my mind I had exactly how the plan was going to work...and when I have a plan I can NOT deviate from the plan...ask Cullen...his family doesn't plan ahead like me and sometimes it makes me crazy...but we are learning to cope.. Back to the story
So I switched my bible time with another teacher so that my planning time would back up to bible and give me a good 20 extra minutes to plan it out/gather supplies from my coworkers...
My sweet and precious friend Logan Ramsey came in to video- his family is like the bomb.com and are very techno- and I had seen a video he did for my friend Ms. Jenna for her boards and just like I HAVE to HAVE a Louis Vuitton or David Yurman, I just had to have him to do my video. (I may have exaggerated a bit there but I thought it added to the story-what'd ya think? ha ha)
We made Oobleck...like from the Dr. Seuss story...it is a mixture of corn starch and water that has the properties at time like a liquid and at times like a solid. Yes I had 28 hands in this sticky mess for about 40 minutes, and the kids loved it. The video was a success- I watched it with my mentor group last night and we all rejoiced together. Rejoiced because I don't have to shoot another video, rejoiced because the end is insight, rejoiced because we are so delirious right now we didn't know when to stop.
On a side note- I have a ridiculously good class this year. They do not always act perfect but 98% of the time "ain't" bad. They said the wow, comments that needed to be made and had the truly amazed looks that needed to be seen in this science as inquiry video.
While washing their hands at the end of the lesson I was telling them how great they were and one of my kids said, "Ms. Pollard, this was like the most fun thing ever!- and don't worry I said that on the video too" and then she gave me a wink. Without telling them they could sense my apprehension and worked to make it all better. Yesterday, was a great day!