Sunday, April 18, 2010

One hundred, four years ago today was the Great San Francisco Earthquake. As I was typing today's date, it suddenly dawned on me that today's date had that meaning.

I just finished recording grades of the papers I finished grading today. When I started grading Thursday's math homework packet I became alarmed because the first paper I graded had so many errors, that I wondered whether or not I was giving the kids review papers that they hadn't even been exposed to previously. Fortunately, as I went through all the papers I discovered that indeed, the students had been taught all the concepts--and some of them I know were taught in grades 3 and 4. Some of the errors were due to students not reading the directions or questions carefully.

One of the weird things I've noticed in correcting papers this last week is the tendency of several children to skip problems entirely. They'll do most of the problems on a page but skip two or three. They'll complete most of the pages in the packet, but skip an entire page or two. This is not good. When the children take the state tests in a couple weeks they must not skip any problems. Any question without a filled in "bubble" is marked wrong and counts against them. I will be talking to the class about this problem tomorrow.

What have I learned about this class in the past week:

* There are many intelligent students in the class
* There are many hard working students in the class
* There are many sweet, enthusiastic students in the class
* Most of the students care very much about doing their best in school
* I'm enjoying my time working with the class most of the time
* The class wants to do the "right thing" and be pleased with themselves

Pretty good, right?

Have a good evening.
Sincerely,
Ruth Landmann