Mods

Maybe a month or so back, I hauled 2 3rd grade girls into the office for unsmoothly executed cheating behavior during a spelling test. I blame the incident in part on the fact that I had no assistant (on Friday I only have one for about the last 25 minutes of class, and who wants a spelling test hanging over their head that long?), because having two pairs of roving teacher eyes tends to put down said asinine behavior. The principal, to my annoyance at the time, said perhaps I should move the test to Thursdays, when I am better supported.

I dug in my heels, for they pay an English advisor a fair chunk of money to design a decent curriculum, and by gosh, I was trying to follow it: new spelling list every Monday, two days of practice/reinforcement with the words, a practice test on Thursday, and a test of Friday. (Though Mallori and I at the get-go had to eliminate all the photocopied worksheets that had been included. The school often simply doesn't have that much paper/toner, and it was suggested we could do much of the work on the board. I like the kids to have something in their hands, especially the ones with NO attention span, but it worked out all right.)

So, I carried on with Friday spelling tests, sometimes borrowing an assistant from another class, like one of the 1st grade English teachers. Obviously this is not ideal. Also not ideal is that on Mondays, when the kids get their spelling tests back and have to write missed words several times each, I also have no steady assistant. Mallori's in for maybe 20-25 minutes and then Diana Maria at the end. Nothing sustained. I'm thinking - finally - of switching to Thursday spelling  tests, and then introducing the new list on Fridays. That would eliminate the problem of needing a second pair of eyes on Friday, but would not help the situation of needing back-up on the days (under this plan, Fridays) when only some kids are writing missed words. UNLESS I could convince Mallori to do my grading in the Thursday class, and have the kids write their words at the end. There's an idea. Immediate feedback. I wonder if it would confuse my brain entirely to have 2nd and 3rd on different schedules.

(Nicol, Susan, and Axel - 3 of 3rd grade's best spellers.)