Oh What a Day!

Oh the joys of being a sub lol. I get up early every day, whether I have a job or not. I had a job booked today for the last few weeks. I was rushing around today, running late. I'm almost to work and my cell rings. I pull into a parking lot and answer my phone (it's illegal in my state to talk on cells while driving and good thing I did, I saw a state trooper. Although he was in line at Dutch Bros. lol) and find out my job was cancelled. That I've had lined up for several weeks.  *sigh* But then she says she has a 1/2 day for me, so I gladly take that! Then I'm almost out of the parking lot and she says, sorry I'm cancelling that too.

Then I get home, settled in and was writing this blog post. But the phone rang. They needed me somewhere else. For a whole day and the lady needs me tomorrow too! And another teacher saw me and said she couldn't remember my sub number so she was happy I was there and now I have a 1/2 day for March :)

It's always interesting subbing for a Russian class though. Only one school in the district has Russian classrooms. I kind of understand how non English speakers feel when thrown in to English only because everything on the wall and 98% of the books were Russian. And the kids' names. Yikes! But she wrote their names in Russian and English. And the kids speak pretty good English. And they are soooo cute!

A few of them said some funny stuff today. One said, "Ms. T, did you know today is Ash Webster?" I smiled and nodded (Wednesday kiddo, Ash Wednesday). And then I was reading The Three Bears.  I was being good because yesterday they read The 3 Little Pigs so I wanted to give them a text to text connection. Which they totally got!

So I'm reading it and it comes to a picture of the 3 bears in their beds. And  a kiddo raised their hand, " Ms. T, why is the mama not in the same bed as the papa?"

Moment of panic in my head but not on my face and another kiddo raises their hand. She answers, "That's cuz the papa is so big, there is no room for the mama. And he snores and is too loud for her." Oh. my. goodness.  Toooooo presh!  And I eagerly nodded my head.

Speaking of the 3 Bears, we did a retell of the story. And it was in a graphic organizer I've never seen before but worked well. It's a pie/pizza/wheel. And each section is a different part of the story and I even noticed kiddos using transition words like first, second! Yay them!

Here's a freebie that I whipped up for you of their organizer: CLICK ME!

And another great retelling...so yesterday I read Sheila Rae the Brave by Kevin Henkes to the kiddos. I paused, asked for predictions, connections, thoughts, etc. Then at the end we did a summary as a class. Title, author, characters, setting, events, resolution/conclusion, author's message, and author's purpose.

They then got a folded piece of paper in thirds so there were  two flaps in the front. On the inside they drew a line in the middle. On top they wrote how Sheila acted and how here feelings were in the beginning of the story. The bottom was how her feelings and actions changed by the end. And on the front they drew Sheila. After they draw and color her, if you open it, you see her feelings on the inside. Brilliant!

These both are great for retelling ! So that was my day. And I got a last laugh as a kid asked me if it was time to 'dress up and go home'. Meaning, coats and backpack. Cute!