random musings

I haven't posted for a while and just had a few things I wanted to write about.

Spanish: I read this book called _7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child_ and it has inspired me to be more consistent about speaking in Spanish. I know I said a while ago that I had a few days where I only spoke in Spanish. Then I stopped, then I tried talking for an hour, back and forth again.

My New Years Resolution this time is to speak in Spanish with Mateo every day. This week I have talked to him in Spanish 90% of the time that I am alone with him. I am still working on not feeling self-conscious when other people are around.

School: I am having a great time at school this year. I really enjoy my job. Of course, like everything, it has its moments. This year I am getting to do two new things. With my first grade class I have a group of 12 students. I have six kids who have scored at the second grade level, and six kids who are behind. I have my high kids reading in partners, while I work with the low kids. Then, I am teaching the high kids to tutor the low kids. It is really fun and finally the high kids are not doing coloring worksheets! They are reading!

My second grade group is going well too. I had a little surprise this week. I was having kids working on writing through this activity called sentence combining. Anyway, they are mostly copying sentences, but it was taking forever. After a few days of this, I asked them to write the alphabet for one minute as fast as they could, to find out how many letters they could write a minute. Surprise, only one kid in the whole group knew the alphabet. Ahh. I guess we have some writing skills to deal with!

My neck: I am having an unpleasant first. I sprained, overstretched, or something with my neck. Thank you Sheila for giving me a mini-massage today. It is still really sore, but I feel slightly better. I am using lots of heat, icy-hot rub and just trying to move like a robot!