Checking off the list

Today I woke up in a better mood than yesterday but still not great. I wasn't terribly optimistic about how school would go, especially after how yesterday ended.  However, I tried to pretend that it would be okay. I had a flash of inspiration on how to engage my students more in math--PowerPoints, whispering, and songs.  I used several PowerPoints today and I definitely employed whispering, which was followed by station activities where they answered similar questions that most of them got wrong on the test yesterday.  It made all the difference!

Yesterday's math lesson=I didn't know what was wrong with me as a teacher and why I was teaching third grade
Today's math lesson=why didn't I do this before, this was awesome, but I can't use it too much or else it will get old

After school I looked up some fun multiplication facts songs that I'm going to play for my class the next few weeks to help them learn their times tables.

Not only was figuring out how to engage my students a success, I also got to watch an episode of The West Wing with Cody (a show we love!  We started in when we were in DC and now it's a friendly reminder of where we lived all summer, helps us keep national events in mind, and connects us to incredibly like-able TV characters), practiced my violin, and went for a run.

I'd say that the mental list I made for myself, thinking it was impossible this morning, has now become finished. And I feel great about that!