Gooooooood Morning madam. fine thank you and You?

…thats what the learners say every morning before class.
if an adult says to them ‘Good morning’ They all reply in unison Gooood morning madam’ or ‘goood morning sir’. The first few days of the year some learners called me sir, because they were used to saying sir from last year ( I almost prefer sir rather than madam. madam makes me feel like an old nun or something). Then the teacher will ask “how are you?” and together the learners say ” fine thank you and You” always raising the tone of  their voice when they s ay ‘and you’. I find it both comedic and annoying. sometimes I change up the order to see what the learners will do. instead of saying ‘good morning’ I might say ‘Hello grade 5′. that throws them for a loop. a few kids always start with the routine ‘goooooood morning’ but when the others dont chime in im left with 21 learners looking at eachother, confused at how they are supposed to respond.
i’ve been thinking about teaching them a new morning greeting routine but haven’t done it yet. I want to say something with a little more pep before starting my classes. any ideas?  please share! I may ask my learners as well. this whole “goooooooood morning” business is nonesense.

anyway

I’m sure I have mention a thing or two in the past about how my classroom is a shelter for all sorts of creatures: a winged animal lives in the ceiling and uses the floor as it’s toilet, there is a hornets nest in the corner, ants fall out of the hole in the ceiling by the chalkboard, and just yesterday a lizard ran across the wall during 6th grade math. Well I decided that it was time to get rid of some of them. The hornets were the most distracting during class, learners would chase them with rulers, so I asked my counterpart to help

tear down the hornets nest. We got s few of the boys to help and during break got most of it down! If we get the rest my classroom will soon be hornet free!

Wednesdays are busy days in Ms Mathias’s classroom. Every wed the learners do Worksheet for a Sticker, they have 20 min to answer 100 addition problems and if they get at least 97 correct they get a sticker on the chart in the back of the room. everyone starts with addition and then moves to sub, mult, div and then mixed. The learners get really excited about getting stickers. At the end of the day they run into my classroom to see if they’ve earned any. I love their enthusiasm.
I also teach grade 5 Basic Information Science and then computers on wednesday afternoons. Today we went over the basic parts of a book and then I read a short illustrated version of Chicken Little. I don’t know how much they all understood my story telling, but they loved the picturee in the book. I’m sure most of the learners did not havr books around to look at on the homestead when they were young, so the book I read was a real treat. I hope it will inspire some of them to start reading the books we have in the library!

After the story I taught computers. Only the learners who paid the fees are allowed to take computers, so I only had 8 learners for grade 5, and most had never used a computer before.

Teaching computer class is really frustrating. I’ve used computers since before all my learners were born. I haven’t had to think about how confusing a username could be, how  difficult it could be to control a mouse for the first time, or what the keys mean on the keyboard. Add a limited understanding of english and my grade 5 computer class is a grand ole time.  Even with a lesson plan, I end up realizing about 2 minutes in that I skipped over what the spacebar is, or how to delete a word. Needless to say, I’m learning a lot about what it takes to teach computers as i’m actually teaching the class.

About 20 min after school let out today it started pouring rain, and learners flooded into my classroom. I let them come in and play cards or chess, so long as they are quiet and clean up before they go. here is a picture of some of them playing in my classroom

ok…the picture is really blurry. sorry about that, but I guess it captures the essence of the pouring rain outside?

till next time,

Goooooooooodbye madam