I probably should have spent my evening inputting grades. However, I decided to spend my evening working on Father's Day Crafts. We drew on our Shrinky Dink plastic last week. I turned on the oven and started shrinking them. They were a Kinder craft I found. I decided to do it anyway because it is fun for parents to see their handwriting. I found it here. Anyhow, they shrunk beautifully. The only issues were the students who decided to write more than I told them, or crammed too many words together. Basically the ones that didn't follow directions. Overall, they came out pretty cute. There was one who wrote it all upside down. Sigh....
Then I started working on their Father's Day Picture. I have a Father's Day Backdrop and I purchased Father's Day Photo Props from Amazon. I decided to laminate them in hopes that they can survive a few more years of abuse. I laminated them tonight. Before we start their Father's Day pictures we are finishing a Time Capsule. They are writing letters to themselves and discussing what their favorite things in 2nd grade were etc. They are supposed to hand over to their parents when completed and NOT open again till they graduate from High School in 10 years. I prepped all of that tonight instead of doing grades.
I was at a STEM training today. It is provided by a man that teaches STEM in his home state of Kentucky. He teaches stem weekly to about 100 Homeschooled children, appears on national broadcasts about three times a year doing STEM activities, goes to local schools, and will travel to teach STEM. I was in his class last year and we worked on some fun STEM projects. Luckily he had some different projects up his sleeve this year and it was just as fun. A colleague and I are going to attempt a couple before school is out. I will have to leave my challenge behind as I will not be able to trust him. Looking forward to that.
Tomorrow is our LAST STATE TEST! Woot. When that is complete it means more work for me. We have Reading Plans to create based on this last test. Some students will be exited from their Reading Plan and some will be put on a Reading Plan. This is NOT fun. It makes parents MAD. Their students only have 1 opportunity to do well on the test. Sometimes, 7-8 year olds are NOT on top of their game and DO NOT take it seriously. It is super frustrating. I can't make someone else's child care and be motivated. It must be a TEAM effort. So many of my students made phenomenal gains. It is exciting to see what they CAN do when they DO want to succeed. I have students with serious learning issues that went up a few points and I call that a success. I only get frustrated when I know they didn't show what they are capable of. I have a couple of students that SHOULD be in Special Education, but the parents will not go there. They really could use that small group individualized help. I had a couple of really low students that worked their behinds off to show that they've grown. I know it exhausted them, but they really really tried. Another thing I can't do is MAKE parents read at home. Read to your kids, with your kids, around your kids, listen to audio-books, hit the mute button on the T.V. and turn on Closed Captioning. JUST READ!!!
Can that be right? 12 days till school is out. I am going to a National Conference this summer for teachers and I found a class I am very interested in. I am also bringing home curriculum to study it and get some quality lessons going before school starts. I hope to be able to tweak some things that I found to be less than quality. I have a few projects to help my parents with. I hope to enroll my Dad in some LAMINATION this summer! He's now pretty much an expert. It will be a busy summer, but I am ready for a break.
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