Status Update

Lordy, I hardly know where to begin.

First of all, I meant to post yesterday and I didn't. I guess I could've written something up during planning period, but I think I was grading. (I'm not sure. I'm still barely awake and it's hard to remember.) Wait - yes - I was. Not actually grading papers, but correcting corrections I'd made in the online gradebook. It's been fighting with me something fierce this year.

First of all, I had a number of students turn in make-up work, which I graded, put in the computer, and returned. Then, on the day AFTER grades were due to the office, I had a bunch of those same students come to me and ask why they had zeros for their make-up work. I'm not sure WHY they didn't save... and, well, it really doesn't matter. I'm going to have to re-do them. Along with filling out paperwork now that it's past MY due date. (But I think I'm going to hand the paperwork off to the students. You want YOUR grade changed? here's the form. ;p)

Then I had three students whose averages were below 50 (the lowest grade we're allowed to give for the first half of the term so that students don't 'log out' halfway through). So I changed those - but apparently I had the wrong column of the program active and changed the term average, not the marking period average.

*sigh*

This week was pretty much a total loss for my English IV class. I'd hoped to be done with Macbeth LAST Friday, and we haven't even finished Act IV yet. AUGH! We had three days at school and I didn't get them ONCE for a full period. Quite frustrating.

Journalism has gone a LOT more smoothly. We have a system for sending everyone out on interviews that seems to be working well. The boundaries are (1) no class is interrupted more than once per period, unless that teacher asks the journalism students to come back later on in the class, and (2) only two days of class time were given for preliminary interviews - this is down from three or four days last article. I'm hoping to move to just one next time.

The idea is that we choose articles Monday, plan out the angle, figure out what we need to know, and from that choose ten potential sources and what we're going to ask them. Tuesday we go do interviews. Rough drafts are due at the beginning of the period Wednesday, and during class we conference in small groups. Homework Wednesday night is to determine which sources we need to revisit for more depth or additional information. On Thursday we'll re-interview. Final drafts, correctly formatted, will be due on Friday.

I need to wrap this up. I really wanted to write about our trip to Disney, but my parents are on their way here and there are clean dishes in the dishwasher, dirty dishes on the counter, clean laundry in the dryer and on the spare bed (which they need), still-packed suitcases and bags in the living room, pizza boxes left out, papers and notebooks and DVDs piled up on the kitchen table...

OH! and I didn't get to post yesterday evening because I was IN A CARNIVAL. But I think THAT will get its own post as well. ^.^

TTFN, darlings!