Tuesday, April 1, 2003

My teacher did not respond to the Email I sent her, so I stayed home from work and finished my homework. I really have a hard time staying home. I look at the clock and think of what I’m usually doing at that time. I would wonder how much more time I needed to finish my assignments. I wanted to go to work as soon as I was done with my assignments, to work for at least three hours. As time progressed, I lost hope. The papers were printed at 4:30pm.

One reason why I wanted to be there was to interact with the first graders. These past days we have been implementing an idea to get the first graders to line up and not create problems after their recess is over. They usually play in the lines; some even run around as if it was the middle of their recess time.

The plan consists of us cutting their recess short by 5 minutes. So instead of playing for 20 minutes, they play for 15. We blow our whistles telling them to line up. Once most of them are lined up, I raise my voice and within a minute they are quiet. By the time the bell rings they are more than ready to head back to their class. Their teachers thank us for keeping them so quiet.

There is an incentive for the first graders to help us out. The lesser amount of time it takes us to line them up and keep them quiet, the more time we’ll give them to play. The first time we did this we cut their recess short by five minutes. The second time, because they had improved, we cut it short by 4 minutes. I think we’ll keep it at 4 minutes for a few more times. If they improve, we’ll let them have all 20 minutes of recess with the warning that if they go back to causing problems after the bell, we’d start over at 5 minutes.

Although the first graders are the only ones we’re trying this plan on, they are not really being ripped off out of 5 minutes of recess. The other students get only 15 minutes. Why is that? Well, after first grade recess is over, we have the third graders coming but they must wait five minutes into their recess time for the first graders to clear the yard. Then come the second graders who must wait five minutes of their recess time for the third graders to clear the yard. Lastly come the fourth and fifth graders, and they too must wait five minutes for the yard to be cleared. The first graders don’t lose the five minutes because the yard is cleared by the time they are ready to play.

So tomorrow I’ll find out how the first graders did. If they messed up, we’ll be back to five minutes…

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