Wake me up when December ends...

Man, these last two weeks have been crazy, and from what my fellow-teachers tell me, next week, the last week of vacation, THINGS ARE JUST GOING TO GET CRAZIER!!!

Almost, every single day, this week, I came home and just wanted to collapse and sleep forever. I don't know if it was because we had our first field trip to the Houston Children's Museum, which I would say, was successful, it was my first field trip, and I DIDN'T LOSE ANY STUDENTS although there were a few I was tempted to leave there.... which is incredible since I had no parent volunteers [every other class had at least two], and twenty insane first graders.

Maybe it was because we had our holiday program right smack in the middle of the week? And while my kids looked really cute dressed as reindeer and Santa Claus, that afternoon I wanted to send them all to the North Pole, to stay.

I also had to give my math benchmark this week, since we have to give it in December, and it's really tough for all my first graders to sit still and take a fifty question test. Though, I graded all my test this weekend, and most of my students, showed as huge growth from the beginning of the year. I had one student, who knew 15% of the material back in September, who knows 54% of the material now. I have some kids who went from about 60% to 90%, there were huge growth spurts for all my students. I'm not too sure about the other class, since I only got them in October, I don't have their BOY scores, but with the exception of a few, they're all, at least within 50%-60% mastery of the material, which since this is the MOY, I would say means they're on the right track, so I must be a damn good math teacher despite my wackiness and the fact my students says I'm like a giant kid.

This week I learned how valuable PowerPoint is. My school has NO science curriculum. I mean we have a curriculum, but no books to support it, so all the science is basically DIY. I've been making a lot of PowerPoint presentations to present the material lately, and my students love them. I also have the only first graders who can probably say bioluminscent and actually know what it means. I've made one for natural sources of water, manmade vs natural light, sound energy, and rocks and minerals, and they're all pretty awesome.

Our staff party was last night, rather uneventful except for the white elephant fight over the Magic Mike video that I brought for the grab bag. I wound up with a box of pretty martini glasses.

One more week of school, then a two week vacation, and I CANNOT WAIT, I love my little firsties, but man do I need a break from them.