My classes are all busy, and there never seems to be enough time! My regular classes took a break from my teaching yesterday. I have had an education student from UAH observing each week, and she had a requirement as part of her class to prepare and teach a lesson to my students. She showed a brief video from pbskids.com on bullying, and she had students answer some questions about reading a graph with information about bullying. Then she read a childrens’ book about bullying. The topic ties in to the novel we are reading, Freak the Mighty, in which the two characters stand up to the neighborhood bully. We are now about halfway through the novel, by the way.

My regular classes also took a notebook test this week, and scores have been recorded for that. Many students had better grades on this notebook check. All of the answers for the test should be things that they have written during class instruction — no memory work should be involved.

My advanced students are working on their literature circle novel. I am happy that I could order enough books so that I could check a book out to each student yesterday. Most groups are nearly finished with their first group meeting and are ready to start the next section of reading. Tomorrow, I will be assigning a date for the second group meeting. Meanwhile, they turned in wonderful collages today to go along with the mystery story they will be writing. I was impressed with the creativity and variety of posters they completed. Almost all of the students reported that the collage helped them picture the characters, the setting, and what will happen in their story.

Tomorrow is Halloween, of course, and I hope that all of my students have a safe and happy evening!