Struggled through another day with half a voice today. I actually had a little more voice than yesterday but it's still kinda hard.

Today I had them try this activity again where they read the weekly reader and then pretend to be TV news reporters and do a report on the story as a group. Last time they just basically all ended up standing at the front of the classroom, heads buried in the magazine, just reading the article to the class. This time I overemphasized that I really wanted them to try to imagine what the news is like on TV and do something like that. I even let them watch about 5 minutes of CNN headline news so they could see the styles of reporting. They did a little better this time. However, one group's story was about the snakehead fish in America (it's a toothy chinese invasive fish species that was released in some american waters and basically eats all the other fish). Well they talked about the fish for a few minutes and then went straight to a news report about a woman who'd been attacked by a snakehead fish and had an arm covered in red-pen simulated blood and everything. The rest of the report was completely unrelated to the article and was all about this woman and how she got attacked by this fish. No idea where that came from.

Last week I had the kids fill out this form that told about what the world in their closet is like (We're reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe so I had them imagine another world in their own closet). Today I had them finish writing a letter to anyone telling them about what that world is like. I had this one kid who wrote to his friend and the whole letter was filled with a description about how he's the god of his world and everyone else will bow down to him. It went on and on in great detail about his "minions" and whatnot. There was another kid that said his world was inhabited by demons and the devil. Sometimes I wonder if I should be alarmed or something by that kind of stuff. Is it a reflection of something going on in their lives or are is it just harmless imagination? I hope it's the latter.

I have this one kid who takes 3 to 4 times as long as the rest of the class to do anything. Anything at all..pick something...I guaranty he can take twice as long as the average 4th grader to do it. Every day I start telling him to get ready to leave at 3:10. By the time the bell rings at 3:20 he's never ready. Today I told him to get ready. 30 seconds later he's standing at someone's desk talking. I told him to get ready, another 30 seconds later he's staring at the cover of his library book. So then I went over there and stood next to him. Even with me standing right there I had to tell him to get ready and stop doing something else 3 or 4 more times. He just gets distracted so easily. This is a kid who last week was sitting in the middle of the gym at morning assembly and noticed he had a scratch on his leg that needed cleaning immediately. So right in the middle of the gym he pours his bottle of water all over his leg. Even after water is all over the floor he has no concept of the mess he's made. That's pretty typical. His desk is a disaster area. He's a very creative kid...if only I could get him to do his work. This is a different kid from my space cadet...this kid does take part in class.

Well, that's about all I've got today. Later.