We had an interesting first week to the new semester.

In science class, we learned about scientists and what they do. One of the things they do is measure. So we pretended to be scientists and we measured a whole bunch of things.

In Math class we played a leapfrog game and counted by 2's all the way to twenty! The students are getting better at it.

In Phonics class we learned to distinguish the middle sounds of words. All of the words were one syllable words but all of the class can get the right answer most of the time. We also took out the picture dictionary for the first time and students had to find some words in the dictionary using the alphabet as a guide. They did very well for their first time.

Christine was great. She has started to become able to sound out words. She was able to spell the word panda in class with my help sounding it out.

Jae is doing well academically, but her classroom manners and behavior is beginning to slip. She makes some mean comments to her classmates and has been talking while the teacher is talking especially with Theresa. I have had to separate the two of them often this week and it is the first time I have had to take such steps with either of them.

Theresa and Jae have become even closer in the last little while than before. I want to encourage them to be good friends, but they must know that being good friends should not be about excluding others or talking over the teacher.

August is getting much better in phonics. The puzzle pieces seem to be falling into place for him.

Jason has developed a habit of playing with his fingernails during class. This keeps his attention away from what he should be learning.

Leetrue talks very loud in class and when I am trying to get the class's attention, he often will continue to talk and even talk louder. It gets him in trouble quite often and it is an issue that is very difficult for him to fix.

Elaine has a habit of standing up in the middle of class and walking up to me to tell me something like how much she misses her mother or that she needs to blow her nose. She needs to learn how to raise her hand when she needs something.

Ivy is doing just fine. She is easily keeping up with the level of the class. Although her speaking ability is not quite as high as the others, her understanding, behavior and phonics/reading/writing level is right on!