Day #2 in Year 3

Today just seemed to drag on forever! My day didn't start real well when I forgot my name badge/blue card at home. Tina so kindly drove and retrieved it for me. From then it was a busy, long day. I took roll call and found out what the students' favorite foods were, several of them being pizza, ice cream or a specific fruit. I then was faced with a difficult task leading a small guided reading group with two of the most difficult students in the class. Neither of these students have been diagnosed with anything, however they are simply terrors. When I am my lessons or simply taking roll, they both are of great distraction to the rest of the class, extremely needy, and difficult all around. Having them together in a group for small group reading was absolutely awful. They kept standing up, flipping to the wrong pages, egging eachother on, making fists at eachother, refusing to read, pretending that they didn't know simple words, as well as NOT obeying a single direction I gave. After that was over, the day went much smoother. My lesson went over very very well, and it appeard that the students had a STRONG understanding of what I taught them. I continually reminded myself to pace myself and think I improved in that as well. We seemed to have a strange case of a mysterious sickness passing around the room as well, because 3 of the boys in the class repeatedly said they felt "sick". Two of these boys were the ones mentioned previously. I simply told them for the hundredth time to tough it out, and that there wasn't much longer left. The last part of the day (Science), the students were looking at cross sections of different fruits and vegetables. All of the specimens were very common but I found it interesting that in the Australia they call Bell Peppers, Capsicum. After school, Kyryn and I talked about the students' workbooks. She told me that the school purchases workbooks (which are essentially notebooks/grid paper books for math) for the students as well as scissors, glue, erasers, and pencils. The students do not have a single textbok. I told her that culturally, this is very different in the United States and that the school purchases the textbooks while the parents/families are asked to purchase the supplies. Very very interesting. On a lighter note, I was also asked "Truth or Dare, Romance or Scare" by one of my students today. I politely declined his invitation into that game. :)

Morayfield, Australia