Today was a magic day

I don't know if I have mentioned my two little troublemakers a whole lot but, Za'Juan and Efrain have a really hard time behaving all day and they get in trouble noticeably more than the rest of the class. But today, Efrain only lost one point and Za'Juan earned a STAR! I admit, I let more than a few things slide but I really wanted them to be successful. The greatest part was that the kids noticed that they were working really hard and kept bringing it up and encouraging them all day. It was so wonderful and affirming in so many ways. I mean, one of the concerns about splitting up classes/adding teachers/getting a million new students is that there won't be a bond and it will be harder to form a classroom community. But those kids and I have worked so hard these weeks and to see something so magical like kids really rooting for each other felt amazing. I feel like we all went home winners today.
During math, we did a little activity together and then I had the kids work on some leftover practice pages we hadn't gotten to so that I could work one on one with some struggling mathematicians. I swear I saw the light bulb turn on for one kid. By the end of the day, he was using so many little addition strategies that we talk about as a whole class but that didn't click for him right away.
Next week is report card week big time. The district decided to switch to this new report card and it is lunacy. It requires that we individually test kids on skills like ordering numbers to 100, comparing numbers to 100, counting money, identifying coins, print concepts like title, author, words, sentences, telling time, words read per minute, and on and on. It is just not realistic that we can get this done inside the regular school day. So I am going to start bringing kids in at lunch to get the stupid things done.
Looking forward to the early on next Thursday. Even though it just means meetings.

Love,
Miss Bee