Good Morning!

Dragonlass did not roar this morning until 6:30, by which point I had been up for fifty minutes and was on my way out the door. So all's well on that front, for the moment.

I'm wearing a pair of pants I thought would not fit. I had a back-up pair ready just in case. But they do fit at least as well as they did when I bought them in July. With them, I'm wearing a top I bought in April which is looser by far than it was then, but still looks good. Which is nice. The colour of it is a dusty blue-grey. One of my best colours.

My report cards are done, again, hopefully for the last time this term. I've started to pencil people in for interviews next week. Next Thursday will be a very long day - I'll be at work at 7:00 a.m. and doing my last interview at 6:45 p.m. - but the payoff is a half-day off on the Friday. It's a P.A. day, designated for interviews, but most people can't come during the day on a weekday, so we set them up for the evening before and then give ourselves a half-day off on the p.a. day. I'm going to do my Christmas shopping that day - all of it, at the mall across the street from the school.

Today, I must finish my DRA marking and actually come up with the numbers that show which kid is reading at which grade level. The thing is, I already know the answers. I heard them read, I know how they think, and I guessed right for all but two of the kids in my class. But coming up with the numbers that prove it will take ten minutes per kid. I still have 17 to do. They must be handed in to my principal by Friday.

I wish I'd landed in a First Steps school. I know how to do that, and I know exactly how to get it done fast. It's tiring to have to learn a whole new system every time I change schools. Especially when they're all equally good.

I'm off to pump some caffeine, in the form of very strong tea. I'm going to be out of here by four, come hell or high water, because DRA's aren't worth more of my time than that.

My smart kids

I just finished marking a French assignment, and I have to boast. I have some really smart kids.

The assignment was a set of ten questions based on the play we're doing, which is Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The questions are basic recall, with the possibility of pulling answers directly from the play. There are four possible correct responses to most of the questions.

C level: found the one-word answer that correctly answers the question, without putting it into a sentence of any kind.

C+ or B- level: lifted a complete sentence from the play. The mark difference relates to whether they copied it correctly.

B level: Took the words from the question and formed a new sentence with the correct answer. THis is the mark to which I led them while going over each sentence individually. Most students did, in fact, manage this.

A level: Took the B level answer and added a fragment or words to the sentence to make it say more. If they tried for this but made serious errors, I still gave them a B+ for effort. This was not possible on all questions, though two of my girls found ways to do it where I didn't think of any. THey're the kids who got A+'s.

Now, the thing is, I tried doing similar assignments with my grade 7's and 8's in previous years. I walked them through the answers, underlining question words that should not reappear in the answer, circling subjects and verbs that should, etc, etc. I never once in two years of that had a student hand in an assignment that these kids would have gotten a B+ for. Not once.

I had four A-'s, two A's, three B+'s, and only three marks below a B-, out of 26 kids. There are three papers that were not turned in, and two for which the students were away the first day and therefore handed in an incomplete assignment. The most common mistake was forgetting to move the "est" to the other side of the subject in a question that said, "Comment est la chaise de Bébé Ours?"

This means that more than three-quarters of my class are working at or above grade level in French. (I'm extrapolating that the kids who were away would actually have done a good job if they'd been here. I'm also guessing that the outstanding assignments were not completed at all.) Those who are below it still did enough that I know they understand the play. They can't put a sentence together in English, but they can take a shot at it in French.

I'm so pleased. I've boasted to every teacher who has a smattering of French already. Now I get to pump up my kids by telling them, truthfully, that none of my grade 7's could have done as well as they did on these questions!

How British Am I?

I am 77.5% British, just like
Michael Caine
Though you know your way around London you are most likely to retire to the West Coast of the USA.

Take the Brit Quiz at
darrenlondon.tripod.com/britquiz1.htm
Quiz written by Daz daz71

Confessions re: my British-ness

1) I have never been to London, though my dad was born there.

2) If I didn't know which answer was more British, I picked the one that seemed least American.

3) Fireworks happen in neither the spring nor the fall. (Use of the word "fall" in relation to a season should bring my score down.) Fireworks happen on the soggiest weekend in May. If it rains on the Sunday, the fireworks are put off until the Monday. If it rains on the Monday too, you've had a normal Victoria Day weekend.

4) They forgot to ask about neighbour, harbour, and programme. I spell two out of three of those the way I just did. Any guesses as to which one I spell the American way?

5) I would never in a million years retire to the West Coast of the U.S. Too many earthquakes. I'm happy right where I am.

Quiz stolen from redstorm, who really is MUCH more British than I will ever be. :)

cold

It is chilly up here.

This probably has a lot to do with two or three factors.

The first, obviously, is that it's November, and windy, rainy, and chilly outside.

The second is that our thermostate is located in the dining room. Therefore the only temperature in the house that counts is the temperature in the dining room. The office is a long way from the dining room.

The third is that, over the course of the three years we've lived here, my wonderful husband has taken out storm windows or screens or both from three or four different windows, and not put them back in. So instead of two panes of glass between us and the elements, there's only one. This is true of the bedroom, the office, and the living room windows. In most cases, the reason the storm windows never went back on is that they were bent in order to get them out in the first place, and now my slightly-handy man isn't sure how to unbend them so they'll fit again.

The fourth reason is the front door. Last year we put weather stripping on the screen door, but if you were to stand in front of it right now, the draft would be quite obvious. This last is, in my opinion, the gap which has the largest effect on the temperature of the overall house, and certainly has the largest effect on the work our furnace does. There's a vent right next to that door.

Home improvements needed: New storm windows that are easy to open, close, remove and put back, as necessary. Approx. cost: $5000. New weather stripping for both the inside and outside front doors. Approx. cost: $200. Some cheap fabric draft blocker thingies from the Regal catalogue: $20, and endless hours of frustration as we all trip over them.

Cost of doing nothing: about $400 over the course of the winter in extra heating bills.

Anyone want to start a pool on who we'll be paying this winter, the home-improvement guys or the gas company?