This has been an interesting week with a lot of unexpected events.
This week started off as a “normal” week (which I’m starting to question is ever a real thing in the winter when your teaching) so I was ready to attack it with all of my motivation and efforts. This lasted all of 1 day, because Tuesday morning I woke with a terrible cold.
I hate being sick but I especially hate being sick while also being a teacher. There is never a good time to be gone, so even though I was feeling terrible, I still went to school.
This was a BIG mistake. I was exhausted, crabby, and stuffed up all day. It was so bad that at one point, one of my kids literally said, “Ms. Nygaard, you look terrible.” Oh the honesty of kids. I pushed through the day but got lesson plans made for Wednesday because I needed to sleep.
What do you do when you have a sub? Do you continue your weekly plans and are okay that someone else is teaching it and you don’t know what’s going to happen? Or do you give the sub a bunch of review for your class so they don’t have to teach anything? I always HATE giving the sub major lessons to teach. (Yes, I’m a control freak!) I usually give the sub a reading lesson that my kids do every week with a different story so they know what the expectation and the lesson is. I struggle having a sub teach a new math lesson. I always have review set days that I’m gone so I have nothing to worry about. But of course, since I was not planning on being sick, I couldn’t switch up Wednesday’s lesson. I came back Thursday and found out my kids struggled understanding what was taught.
Coming back after being gone for a day of school is always stressful. I got to school early Thursday morning so I could get everything taken care of from the day before and prepare for the current day before the kids came. For math, I had to reteach the day before (which I knew I’d have to do.) My kids are currently learning about decimals and have learned place values to the tenths and hundredths. When I was gone, they learned about the thousandths and started to get it all mixed up. During my prep on Thursday, I went around taping some cheat sheets to everyone’s desks so they would have a reference right in front of them!
Luckily we had a fun activity planned for reading so that helped me get into the day!
This week, we had to review idioms. A few years ago I found this super fun template for a “class idiom book.”
Each kid picks an idiom from a hat and has to describe what the idiom is, what it actually means, and then draw a picture of the idiom if it was literal. I LOVE this activity (and they did too!) They all turned out super cute!
It made the day a lot more fun after dealing with catching up from being gone.
Today was another crazy day with a crazy twist. Up here in Minnesota, we are currently in the middle of a snow storm. The storm was predicted to start at noon today. Because it was (and turned out to be) supposed to be a big and bad storm, last night most districts made the announcements that schools would release early before the storm. We got out a noon today and it was crazy but also amazing! I’ve spent the past 6 hours relaxing, watching movies, and catching up on sleep because I still feel crappy.
It’s been a week, we’ll see if next week finally brings “normal week” that has been much needed after break.
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