Just another Edublogs.org weblog

My focus for the day was sentences versus fragments.  It was amazing!  I stressed the fact that a sentence had a subject and predicate and a complete thought.  I gave the example of “The blue house on the corner” and asked if it was a sentence or a fragment.  In three of the classes, some thought it was a sentence.  I asked what the subject and predicate were.  The subject, of course, was easy.  They had a little trouble identifying the predicate, though.  In the first class someone suggested “on”.  Needless to say, this lesson took longer than I had anticipated.

I also had them do their first free writing.  This experience provided me with a pleasant surprise.  With only a couple exceptions all day, they were able to write an entire page in 10 minutes.  I had expected to see a lot of them having trouble getting started, but no one seemed to really.  So maybe it will be easier for them to write than I had anticipated. That means I can focus more on other things.  But I will continue to do free writing as an idea generator, if nothing else.

Class rosters are still changing.  I hope that they will have sorted themselves out soon!

Today was the first day of class.  I started off by taking the wrong roster with me to my 10:00 class.  Because classroom assignments had been changed recently, there was a lot of confusion all day.  In the end, it went OK, though.

The only real thing I wish I had known before classes started and I handed out the books they will be using was that they aren’t allowed to write in them.  I will have to try to rectify that tomorrow.  Hopefully it won’t be too late.

Many of my students are on athletic scholarships, and I know it is going to be difficult for them to succeed in the class because they will miss so much of it due to games.  I hope to find a way to help them in spite of that.  We’ll see how successful I am.

Why, you might ask, do I need another blog?  Well, I can’t say that I was planning to have one until I was encouraged by edublogs to create one to help make edublogs ad-free.  Since Random Thoughts has become pretty eclectic, and since I am starting a new job in the fall, I thought it would be good to document my experience.   So this blog will, I hope become a reflective journal as I move through the year and beyond.  Join me on my journey!