Back to School. . . Finally!
I am finally back at school after a week of closings due to snow. The students were wound up! I think that they were glad to see one another...I couldn't get a few of them to keep their mouths closed!

I didn't do much teaching today. On Thursdays, my classes have Library Skills during English class. The librarian came in and gave them a "refresher" on the differences between fiction and non-fiction and a review on the Dewey Decimal system. She also discussed how to search for books using a card catalog! I haven't thought about using a card catalog since 1987! Since I graduated from High School, I have used a computer while searching for books. Now, I find books on my home computer and usually know exactly what I want when I go to the library. I am spoiled, I guess. The librarian told me that the school is going to get a computer system soon, so the card catalog will be extinct. Although the students will be using a computer to locate books, it is still important to learn about shelving systems. They still have to find the books! Computers don't retrieve our books for us (yet!)

After the librarian's visit, I had the students complete some textbook activities in which they had to use irregular verbs and use both past and past participle forms of the words. They also worked on finding helping verbs in some textbook sentences. We are having a quiz on these two verb components on Monday. I reminded them that they had to memorize the 23 helping verbs for the quiz. I hope that they do this. It will be an easy 23 points for them if they do.

Tomorrow I am going to have my classes work on their short stories. I think they like to write. . . or maybe, they just like to not talk about verbs. Since I am getting my webpage in gear for my upcoming job search and Fall classes, I thought it might be neat to put their stories on my website if they wanted me to post them. I am going to try to get them into the computer lab so they can type their final drafts. I am not sure I can arrange it with the computer teacher. Since I am only at the Middle School for two more weeks, we have a lot of work to get done on actually writing the stories before my students need to worry about typing them.