Must be the rain

After several months of hot, hot weather, a still-hasn't-ended rainstorm started late Friday night. This brought the temperatures way down and made things a lot wetter. It also maybe (?) curbed some behavior problems I've been having.

Actually, I think it has a bit more to do with some other things I've been implementing. I've started a table competition, where each table (there are 6) starts with 10 tally marks on the board at the beginning of the day, and they lose marks through bad behavior, not showing work, etc, and they gain marks through participation, doing homework, etc. The table with the most tally marks at the end of the day gets an extra blue ticket per person.

My second class is slowly but surely shaping up. There are still a few talkers and kids who don't pay attention. But where it had been around 18 out of 22, now it's down to around 5 out of 22.

Academics is a slightly different story. I was not pleased at all with the scores on the test that the kids took last Friday. It was not a hard test at all, covering place value, number patterns, and number words. But out of 44 kids, only 4 got a perfect score, while 13 scored 50 or below. Most of the incorrect answers were made due to really really stupid mistakes. (Of course, I say "silly" mistakes in class -- but they are stupid mistakes like not adding correctly, or writing the wrong number down to add).

Oh well, I'll take what I can get and keep plowing the road ahead...