Friday, LOTF, and kid games

Some weeks drag on. And on and on. That was last week. I took this picture last week trying to capture how much I hate progress reports, grading, and long weeks. I was so tired all week, I had a ton of stuff to get ready for progress reports and I had lunch duty (ughhh). By Friday, I didn't want anything to do with school. 

This week was better. Even though I had the GRE on Saturday looming over me the whole week, it went okay. We're almost done with Lord of the Flies in the 10th grade and a few more kids are getting into it. My seniors have turned in some research rough drafts and we're almost done with the literature part of the course. Everything is wrapping up nicely. I ended up ahead of myself and not behind, for once. It felt strange. I kept feeling unproductive. It'll pass with the upcoming weeks due to SOLs, papers, projects, and exams. I'm looking forward to when the seniors leave so I can finally make the room more of my own and start setting up for next year. Speaking of next year, I told my administrators and department chair that I'd be willing to help with a literary magazine, if they would like one started up again. I think it'd be really great for the school. Hopefully, if I get it, it'll be fun to do and not a huge chore. Ha.

Since I've had this whole quarter to teach Lord of the Flies, I've been able to do more with it, even though we're reading it in class (due to lack of books available for all Eng 10 classes).

I had them draw pictures:

I've had them do small writing assignments and journals on just about every aspect of the book, from why we like stories involving characters on the island to writing letters to the characters giving them advice to why Simon is so weird. They've done pretty well on it all.

So I threw them a challenge. I made a twitter for Simon (http://twitter.com/thebeastwthin), two of the three classes got to vote on who they wanted to do: Jack (http://twitter.com/CSharpHero), Piggy (http://twitter.com/notpiggy), or Ralph (http://twitter.com/want2BRescued). They had to come up with the suggestions and so far, they've done pretty well. What's  on the twitters are a combination of their suggestions, since a lot of them suggested similar ideas. We haven't finished them since we haven't finished the novel. They seemed to enjoy it and some of the suggestions made me laugh. 

Another thing I did with my 5th period, since they meet every day and thus get farther ahead quicker, was have a funeral for Simon. Yesterday we read the chapter where Simon is killed, so today I had them get into groups and write poems or paragraphs eulogizing him. They did a great job, I was really surprised! Some of them took on the voice of a character from the book (mostly Jack, since it's easier to write from his POV), but I had two great poems. 

After we did that, we had extra time, so I let them have free time. It was a plus for me since it allowed me to grade a little more (I was trying to grade as much as possible so I wouldn't have to worry about that while taking the GRE tomorrow). 

My 5th period is definitely one of my best classes. They're creative, they're productive, they're absolutely hilarious and they get along the best out of all of the classes, probably due to them meeting every day. During free time, I asked them to be quiet, so Kaitlyn decided to teach her friends a game she learned before. It was so strange and distracting that everyone in the class started watching them. Finally, I asked them to either stop what they were doing in 2 minutes (giving them time for one last game) or to include everyone. They were totally cool with that (I love them for that! In my other classes, they'd probably just give up their game) and decided to sit on the floor and teach others:

They changed the game after a few tries of the normal version and started trying to make weird faces or weird voices when it was their turn. When Garrett got to start it, he decided to do something a little different...