Here's a recap of a much better Thursday following a tough Wednesday (DISCLAIMER: IF YOU'RE A CUBS FAN, YOU MIGHT NOT BE READY FOR THIS POST, THOUGH IT'S ALL IN GOOD FUN).
     In reading class, students continued reading Jim Murphy's The Great Fire, moving onto Chapter 2 and exploring how everything went wrong en route to this fire being a complete disaster. Thanks to Ms. Murphy for relating this to Murphy's Law, when anything that can go wrong, does go wrong (see Daniel Murphy's performance against the Cubs in the concluded NLCS). In the case of the Great Fire, this was certainly the case, as a series of mistakes helped the fire quickly become uncontrollable. Like yesterday, students read in groups, searching for a piece of text evidence that showed a grievous mistake during the fire. Students then shared their text evidence at the end of the chapter and formed a synthesized group main idea based on that evidence. I am excited to see what the students came up with tomorrow when they will present on the bumblings and stumblings of certain Chicagoans (not named the Cubs starting rotation) during the Great Fire.
       In social studies, the effort was much better than yesterday as students performed different roles (Previewer, Reader, Vocab Finder and Researcher) while starting Chapter 2, which focuses on the earliest civilizations in the Fertile Crescent. Students learned how the Mesopotamians made the best of a difficult situation, unlike Chicagoans during the fire who made a bad situation much worse. For example, the Mesopotamians were smart enough to adapt to the long, dry and hot summers that threatened their lives by developing irrigation systems that tapped into the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and allowed them to grow crops, create surpluses and specialize. Talk about an adaptive group. Too bad the Cubs weren't as adaptive at figuring out Mets starting pitching, realizing not to pitch to Murphy, and keeping the aggressive New York team more contained on the basepaths.      
     In writing class, my homeroom went to Ms. Reodica to work on the science fair review of literature while her students came to me to wrap up some work with subjects and predicates, which have proven as tricky for the students as the Mets starting rotation was for the Cubs this past series.
       Last but not least, we had a tornado drill in the morning. Gratefully, a real tornado was not noticed today in Chicago, though there was one in the top half of last night's first inning in the form of Lucas Duda's and Travis D'arnaud's back-to-back jacks that effectively ended the series and the Cubs season.
      It's wait 'til next year for the Cubs. As for the kids and me, it's wait 'til 2:45 p.m. tomorrow. While "It's Not Gonna Happen" this year, "It's the Weekend" (almost).

     Is it a full moon? Is Halloween actually this weekend? Is something funky going around in the air? I am not quite sure anymore as this has most definitely been a draining, challenging and stressful week, with Wednesday being no exception and certainly feeling like Hump Day. The day was like a roller-coaster ride, with some encouraging highs in reading followed by a disappointing low in social studies. Here is a recap of a "Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde" of a day.
     In reading class, we began reading Chapter 1 of Jim Murphy's The Great Fire, with both classes doing an excellent job identifying supporting details for the main idea that "Chicago was a city ready to burn" (kind of like how Cubs' fans are likely feeling right now as the Mets lead 6-0 in the third inning of an elimination Game Four). The kids found some awesome supporting evidence, including there being a delivery of "two tons of timothy hay" to the famous barn that very same day, the city being equipped with 600 miles of wooden sidewalks, and some incredible foreshadowing with a

     I was very excited to have our first Battle of the Books meeting today after school. Thanks to the four students who showed up today. Due to conflicts with the musical and a cross country meet, several other students could not make it today.
     Despite having a small group, the kids were awesome as we reviewed our new Battle of the Books Note-taking Guide and then assigned our first books: 

• El Deafo by Cece Bell.
• Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt.
• Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson.

     Here are some pictures from the first meeting. See you next Tuesday, when we will officially dive into our first books.

      Thankfully the 30th day of the school year was much better than the 29th day. Hopefully spirits will remain high tomorrow despite another Cubs loss in the NLCS. Here's a quick recap of what went down in Room 307 today.
       In reading class, students took their Week 7 vocabulary quiz, which

      It's been way too long since my last post, but school has been extremely busy the past two weeks. Additionally, today was a really rough day, not for the students, but for me personally as I felt a bit overwhelmed and frustrated putting out some needless fires. The key is to make sure that days like today are the exception rather than the norm. As is always the case, I love to teach and appreciate the wonderful opportunity to work with great kids everyday, even if the occasional stresses of the job do not always allow me to show that. Of course, this job is not a sprint but a marathon with highs and lows along the way. It's only human nature to have a couple of bad days interspersed with the many good days, though it is not always easy to see this big picture when in the midst of the daily grind. Unfortunately, today was one of those days during which I struggled mightily to keep this perspective in mind.
      With all that said, I will eventually catch up on what has been happening within my classroom the past two weeks as I am committed to this diary, and first and foremost, my students.  As for today, here is what happened.
     In reading class, we reviewed last week's vocabulary quizzes, especially the need to show the meaning of vocabulary words when writing paragraphs. In other words, students should assume that I do not know what the word means, go beyond just using the word correctly, and then show meaning via some context clues. From here, students did a quick read of the brief outline of the Great Chicago Fire called The Chicago Fire. They will do a GIST summary of the short book (only 16 pages) tonight and then use this

     Here's a brief glimpse of what happened in Room 307 today.
     In reading class, we reviewed last week's vocabulary quiz in anticipation of tomorrow's quiz, focusing on how to use context clues within the text to help students identify the correct word. We then transitioned into an independent reading comprehension check of the first four chapters of Seedfolks, which we formatively assessed by having kids using their whiteboards to review the questions.
     In social studies, we watched CNN Student News, learning about the effect of Hurricane Joaquin on South Carolina, a bombing in Kunduz by the Taliban, and the use of MDR (mine-detecting rats) to find and deactivate landmines in Mozambique. We then finished up Chapter 1, Lesson 2, on the artifacts of Skara Brae.
    

      A bit sad that the weekend is over? Yeah, me too. Well in that case, here is a great song with a creatively funny video to pump you up for the week. I have been listening to this song non-stop for the last few hours after hearing it on an online radio station,

While still struggling with a nasty cold today, I was welcomed back by my students and had a good day despite the lack of energy. Here's a quick recap to lead you into the weekend. In reading, students worked on their weekly vocabulary word sort in preparation for next week's quiz. We then reviewed the words and did a read aloud of the chapter "Sae Young" from

Unfortunately, the chilly Chicago wind from Wednesday's cross country meet left me feeling as mobile and aware of my surroundings on Thursday morning as King Hippo in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, leaving me at home with a killer cold and knocked out of the classroom today. :-( With that said, here's what the students worked on with the sub today. In reading, students moved to their third close read of the Garden of Eden and compared it with Sam's chapter in Seedfolks, seeking text evidence from