Today there was only one MAP test but by the afternoon I was kind of
wishing there were more. The test was this morning and it went well.
One or two kids went faster than they should have, and one girl
mysteriously started feeling ill shortly into her test. So it was
pretty much a second grade test.
This afternoon I attempted to teach the kindergarteners how to use
Odyssey by walking them through the first lesson, which is by far the
most boring and hardest for the kids to get through. The plan was
for me to go through it on the projector and have them follow along
with me. For the first class this worked relatively well for maybe
the first half of it. That is when I slowly but surely managed to
lose almost all of them. Ten minutes into it the kid sitting next to
me looked over and asked me why I was playing little kid games. I
just looked back dumbstruck for a second and then said “Because I'm
teaching you how to do this. That is what I have been doing for the
past ten minutes.” He just said “Oh” and went back to randomly
clicking. In the most of them made it through and some of them made
it onto the next couple of activities. One kid completely lost it,
he had tears and snot all over the place because he got off track and
closed the program a couple of times.
The second class held on with me for about as long it took me to show
them where their names were at on the home screen. Then the snowball
started rolling downhill and gathering speed. Once again there was a
kid who completely lost it because he got behind and then closed the
program several times and then couldn't handle life. You would have
thought his dog died and not that he couldn't click on four
highlighted objects on a page. There is a kid that just moved here
from Japan last week and he nailed it, while all these other kids
were completely bewildered. In the second class I ended up running
through the first assignment for five or six of the kids who managed
to not figure it out in the thirty minutes they were in the lab.
The plan was well intentioned but I don't even think the first
graders could have followed along. Probably not even second graders.
Despite that, I think it was worthwhile for at least some of the
kids who will at least now have a better idea of what the hell they
need to be doing in Odyssey. Hopefully.
Today I became aware of the fact that I have a discussion post due by
Sunday, an annotated bibliography due on Monday, an interview with a
librarian due in three week, which I think is right after our
face-to-face for my other class. And I'm still working on the group
assignment. I heard back from one of the other libraries I emailed
today and it was good information but complicated my though process a
bit. Anyway, my belated awareness of all this made me realize I
really need a better system for keeping track of due dates and
things. And by 'better' I mean 'a' system. Winging it isn't working
for me.
After school I went to the old house to watch the video lecture for
this week and then after dinner I came back to work on stuff. I was
going to look into the annotated bibliography but ended up writing my
application letter for the trip to Scotland this summer. Being a new
student I am near the bottom of the heap, just above people who have
already been on a trip, and on top of that the odds aren't great
because only about ten or twelve people go on each trip which is a
small percentage of students enrolled in the program. I would really
like to go because I've always wanted to go to Scotland. But a part
of me also hopes I don't get picked because I would miss the last
week of school. I imagine the odds are good I'll be making another
slideshow for the sixth graders, so I would need to bump the due date
up for that. And make sure I had all the final MAP stuff done. The
end of school is kind of fun and it would be a shame to miss out.
But Scotland would be super cool. Sometime in the next year or two
they are planning on going to Ireland, so if I don't get Scotland
I'll try for that because I also really want to go to Ireland,
probably more than I want to go to Scotland. They talked about
trying to have trips that fit in better with school schedules because
they know a lot of people in the program work in schools, but that is
not the case with Scotland. Either way, I'll know in the next ten
days if I'm going or not.
I just got off with my friend, who I haven't talked to in awhile. We
talked about weird recipes, misguided hiking trips of his youth,
parking, and my mom's new house, which is in the same general area of
town as his dad's house. But now I am going to finish this up and
then head back to the new house so I can go to bed. Tomorrow is
picture day so I need to get my beauty sleep. My friend joked that I
was probably a few hours too late and I countered with probably a few
years. Hopefully it isn't obvious at eight o'clock in the morning
when I'm having my picture taken.
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