So Busy!

Today has been an extremely busy day. Suddenly there seems to be so much to do! First, this morning I got another new student. I'm officially up to 9!!! Then I've also been trying to figure out grad. school stuff and some of it has to be done by today if I want to take a class this fall! I've been trying to get all that stuff together in my spare time, but it's really challenging since I can't make phone calls and the electricity has been awful this afternoon! For about 30 minutes it was on and off literally every 5 minutes so I kept losing everything I was working on. I've also been busy because I'm trying to get stuff together for our after school clubs which start today. Heather and I are doing a Do-RAK (Do Random Acts of Kindness) Club. I think today we will just be making some thank you cards for the teachers and brainstorming some other things we could do as well.

Then tomorrow is a busy day to prepare for, I have all my classes, pre-k and all writing, so it's always a lot of preparation for Thursdays, plus it's Open House so I have to have a 20 minute presentation planned for the parents AND I just found out that I'm starting tutoring before tests and before anyone else. I'm going to be working with a 6th grader who speaks 0 English and has been highly overwhelmed and been crying in classes because he has no idea what's going on. I like that Marcelo thought to ask me, it totally will utalize my ESL certification and classes, but I have to think about what I will do with him tomorrow now too.

FINALLY, I'm officially the ERB test coordinator, so I'm going to have to start coordinating the writing tests for the whole school. It's a nice little resumé boost and I make an extra $1,200 per year which is also a nice little plus, but I've gotta get stuff going on that as well.

So in summary:
Things to do by today:

• Graduate school application and possibly start my courses
• After School Activities Materials and Planning

Things to do by tomorrow:

• Lessons/Materials for Pre-K and all my writing classes
• Plans for tutoring the new ESL 6th grader
• Open House presentation
• Set up the classroom for Open House and make it look pretty
• Get together materials/nametags/etc for our 9th and newest student

Things to do within the next two weeks:

• Plan and organize the ERB writing tests for the school.

Busy. Busy. Busy. Check out some pictures of how well my centers have been going.

This is how we make sure that there aren't too many people in one center. If they want to change where they are they must come to me so we can move their name to somewhere where there's room. It's worked pretty well, they understand better when they can visually see that there isn't room rather than me simply telling them there isn't enough room. The names of the centers are also velcro so that I can change what centers we have each day if I want.

Working in the colors center. I have some color board games, colored bean bags, some cool little see-through colored plastic lenses and that little kalaidascope.

The writing center. I have dry erase papers and books so they can practice tracing their letters. And I have regular large lined paper and pencils for them to write on. Kids love dry erase for some reason.

The shapes center. I use my pattern blocks to let them either build or use my animal patterns. (This will likely change when we learn more about shapes.)