Thursday mornings in the computer lab. . .

And I'm bored.

I gave my kids a choice - type their paragraphs now, thereby avoiding weekend homework, or just play around on the Internet for half an hour. Judging by the shooting sounds and music around the room, I'm not getting many paragraphs. That's fine, because I have no time to mark them, anyway. I think I'll slot that paragraph into third-term marking.

I've been pushing this all year, and they still haven't got it. "Its" and "it's" were on the spelling test today, and more than half the class got them mixed up. I suppose I shouldn't complain - Piet still gets them mixed up from time to time. But still, it bugs me.

After this come French presentations. I had my kids do a research project in French. One of the few published units I use with them is called "Les Animaux en Danger", about animals in danger of extinction. The unit uses very simple sentences, about six to describe each animal. I added questions to that, and I extended some of the sentences, giving them extra verbs and a few adjectives, and explaining how adjectives agree in number and gender with the pronoun referent. (Can you tell I studied a lot of grammar?) They had to write at least seven sentences, and anything more than eleven was fair game for an A, provided they were good sentences with few errors. I'm so proud of my kids - most of my grade fives have internalized more French than the grade eights that I taught a few years ago. Of course, by the time they get to grade eight there's an excellent chance they will have forgotten it and/or developed a resistance to learning it. Still, I've done well with them.

Now I just have to figure out what I'm doing with them when the research project is over. I have no idea. I don't want to do another play yet - not until it gets warm enough that I can send them out on the porch of the portable to work for fifteen minutes. That means I have about a month to fill, and nothing I really want to put in it. Food, maybe? That could work - restaurant dialogues are fun, and it's one of the topics usually covered around this age. Okay, food it is. Voulez-vous des crèpes? :)

The next play will be longer and involve more choice. I'm moving them up to the next level, where the plays actually have more than one scene. I'll let the girls do Cendrillon (Cinderella) but the boys would hate me for that, so there has to be another choice for them. Maybe I'll write one myself.

Period's over. Bye.

Feedback and editing

On rainwolf's suggestion, I went back and added a few lines near the beginning to indicate that Salvatore was pretty much always drunk. It's subtle, but important. He has to be seen as a drunkard in order for the plot to work the way it should. I also need to add a few lines to several combat scenes, highlighting his overconfidence/death wish. There are one or two spots where he shouldn't head for the door at all; he should continue fighting as his men drag him out. A subtle change, but an important one. Then I need to put in something in the battle with the bats, showing up how much that has changed.

I'm not really writing tonight. I don't want to get into a scene, only to give the computer over to Piet in fifteen minutes. And I have real, paid work to do tomorrow. Any renumeration from my book is still quite a ways in the future.

I have a week and a half before my report cards are due in first draft, and I have about eight hours' worth of marking to do before I can write a lot of it. I can do comments tomorrow, and enter marks for a few subjects, but that's about it. Fortunately, once stuff is marked and the comments are written, reports are a snap. It's just a matter of cutting and pasting.

I'm starting to consider the possibility of a prequel, set in the homesea of the Dreamcarver. There would be a lot more freedom to it, because that world isn't in any of the Ironclaw books. I could create most of the world myself. That would, of course, take a lot more work. But I know the ending already, and the bare-bones of the plot. It's the rest that would need to be fleshed out.

Gotta go. Piet's turn.