What Do Skilled Writers Do?

I sometimes like to help my wife grade her students' work, though she won't let me touch the English papers. I'm not sure why. If you don't mark everything (and I mean everything), how will they learn?

Regardless, we're only four weeks into the school year and I've already received quite the education from both her kids and mine.

My wife went down. Last year, she taught fourth-graders. This year she is teaching second grade, and she's very thankful for that. Me? I went up. I am now working with third, fourth and fifth grades.

So it was no surprise that I found myself helping out by grading my wife's second grade math papers. You know, kids are great. Their answers may not always be correct, per se, but sometimes they are really pretty accurate.

Here are just a few of the questions from the papers I graded.

What is the value of three dimes, one nickel and three pennies? The answer given -- Monday. 

Wow! Nailed it! Mondays are pretty worthless.

What is two days before Saturday? The answer given -- Monday.

Another asked what is two days after Monday? The answer given -- Friday.

Wishful thinking, kiddos. Wishful thinking.

While I've also learned a bit from my upper grades, my favorite thing is a poster in one of my fifth grade classes. It's titled (not entitled - English lesson!) "What do SKILLED writers do?" Each student wrote on it what they thought skilled writers do.

Here's a brief sample of their contributions.

[Skilled writers] Take neat notes.

[Skilled writers] Use action words.

They make books.

They use gramer.

[Skilled writers are] Storyiers for people to read.

And my personal favorite:

they wriite flawlessley...  I guess...

I'm currently working on my next flawless blog post. It will be neat, since I'll compose it on the computer. It will also include some action words.

Recalibrating Calendars Pose a Problem

I have to admit, I would be remiss if I didn't share a blog about my "day" job at the local elementary school where I work as a first grade teacher's assistant. While I feel I usually handle 'bumps' and 'hiccups' smoothly, the last few days have been a little less than smooth for me.

We all have 'off' days where we don't seem to get it right and the harder we try, the less we get right. Tuesday, which was really Wednesday, was one of those days for me.

Calendar math is really a straightfoward kind of thing. We go over our calendar together, how many days we've been in school, the monthly and weekly pattern, weather and coins, straws, throw some fun math in there and, presto, calendar math! Unfortunately, the presto wasn't quite there yesterday.

When I do calendar math, I always start out with the current date. The girl I called on told me it was Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2012. I had to explain to her that it was Tuesday, not Wednesday. Then she contradicted me. I stuck to my guns, so to speak.

"Uh, Mr. Haworth," said another student, coming to her aid. He simply pointed at the calendar.

It seems I may have hit the recalibrate button on the calendar. I suddenly noticed that my pointer was pointing at Wednesday and it was indeed Oct. 10, 2012. How a paper calendar can recalibrate itself is beyond my comprehension. However, one of my other teacher's calendar seemed to be suffering the same malady.

Also, I have finally reached the point where I have learned all my kids names. Sadly, I have also reached the point where I have so many names in my head that I start to get them all  mixed up.

I have one student whose name I've remembered since the first day of school, which is remarkable because remembering names is not my strong point. In one day's time, I know I called that particular student Ethan and Evan, neither of which are his name. And, yes, his name starts with an 'E.' I think I may have called him Edgar and Eddie, too! Luckily, though, he wasn't aware of those little mess ups.

Maybe my name problem is not so bad since another student called me Ms. Hoover today.