"You can do it!"

I must say, week 5 went by pretty fast. On Monday, we had a much needed day off due to Presidents Day. On Tuesday when I got to school, I heard word that the stomach bug is going around the whole school. Another third grade teacher left school on Thursday with the bug, and couldn't even come back until Friday of this week. I am praying that I do not get the bug, so I'm drinking lots of O.J.

Tuesday, Ms. M got word that her son, who is in third grade in the next district over, was running in and out of the bathroom with diareah all day. After school, we planned for Wednesday in case she had to call out. Well I got word that night that she did have to call out, and the next day I would be taking over the whole day. I was actually pretty excited about this so I could get a preview of what the upcoming weeks would be like. The only thing I was worried about was which sub would I get?

I went to school pretty early on Wednesday to make some copies and organize the day. A few minutes later, Mr. M the building sub walked in. I was so happy, because I knew him and knew that he was a real down to earth kinda guy, and would help me through the day without problems. Overall, the day went really well. The students didn't act out, well any worse than they usually did, and the lessons all seemed to go over well. I don't know why, but for some reason I felt more comfortable and confident in front of Mr. M then I did with Ms. M, maybe because he's not giving me the grade?

Friday, the students had "bio's in a bag" due. The theme for this was African American Heroes. What the students had to do was get a bag, decorate it with information and pictures of their person, and out props in the bag that help describe their person. I love this idea of bios is a bag. It's a cool way to digress from the old, boring paper book reports.

Since they were just going to be presenting their projects during reading and the later social studies and extra reading block, Ms. M told me that I could just work on my bulletin board I was creating for PSSA. Let's say that I jumped on the opportunity, since I knew it would take a lot of time, and I would rather start it early and get done at a reasonable hour Friday night, instead of staying until 8pm.

For my bulletin board, I decided to create a board that made the PSSA test look not so scary. I decided to use a crayon theme, and use the phrase " We're the brightest crayons in the box". I made a bunch of plain crayons on bright card stock, and had the students write positive phrases or messages to their classmates about the PSSA's.

This was the board. It really wouldn't have been that long of a project, but since it was at the entrance to the stair case, and the windows were glass, I had to put it on both sides of the archway, otherwise it would have looked incomplete.

The inspirational messages below were so cute! They had saying such as "You can do it!" "You're great!" "Rest for the test, and let your brain do the rest!". It was nice to see the kids saying such kind words about themselves and their classmates, because I know that a lot of students really doubt how well they can do.

Next week I am taking on Science again, and starting the next Math unit, and doing half of the Reading block. I was really starting to worry about how much teaching I was taking on, but Ms. M reassured me that I am doing fine, and that the fact that she can flop me between all the subjects throughout the week means that she's not worrying about me not succeeding. She also reassured me that once PSSA's were over, it would pretty much be like she's not even there. I was starting to worry, but I guess I feel a little bit better now. And I mean, it's not even the midway point yet. I still have 8 weeks left!