get well soon

We were a student down yesterday, Arturo didn’t make it into school. I didn’t think too much about it because he had complained of a stomach ache on Monday. He wasn’t in today, because he was in hospital. Recovering. From an operation. Ooops. Earlier on this year, in August we had talked about adaptations in Science. We had discussed the fact that a long, long time ago humans used to eat grass. Grass is very difficult to digest. In fact, to help digest grass cows have four (?) stomachs. Humans only have the one stomach, but what they did have was a working appendix. This helped them with the heavy work of “getting the goodness out of grass“. Of course, nowadays most of us don’t eat grass – even Miss Lilian gives it a miss – so our appendix is useless. It just sits there, in our tummies with nothing to do. Except, it is fully loaded with “grass-digesting-acid” and when it gets bored, it decides to cause problems. it fills up with horrible stuff and makes a decision to explode. [This is a very bad description of appendicitis, if you are thinking of becoming a doctor I’d look elsewhere for a description.] Anyway, Arturo’s appendix had decided to “join the other side“. As I explained, back in August, this is not necessarily a problem if it is caught quickly enough. And, in Arturo’s case, he is fine. In fact, he has already told his mum that he expects to be back in school on Thursday – because there are exams next week! If you are reading this Arturo, don’t worry. Get better, get strong. The exams will wait. You are more important!

The maths lesson was a return to prime factors, in a way. It was also a quick revision of H.G.C.F. and a lead in to L.C.M.. It went well, very well. In fact, as far as I can remember, the only person who made a *huuuuuuuge* mistake was Mr. Kay. I confused the G.C.F. for the L.C.M. , and then proceeded to confuse everyone by claiming that the L.C.M. of 16 and 32 was 16 (instead of 32). I had to take myself out of the classroom and give myself a good talking to.  (I think there might have been some screaming and shouting involved as well.)

In the English lesson there was also some screaming and shouting. Again it was Mr. Kay who was involved, except in this case it had more to do with him creeping round the classroom, and coming up behind some third graders who were trying to hide near Sr. Francisco’s workshop. This put them very close (just outside) the classroom windows. The English lesson was complicated enough – trying to explain the difference between compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences – without several children sitting outside the window, chatting away. However, one good scream from Mr. Kay and they all ran away. It also had the added benefit of making sure that everyone in my classroom was also awake!

I love teaching. I really enjoy it. I like teaching maths because it is full of “oh yeah” moments. Those moments when students get something, suddenly understand it, and immediately (and totally involuntarily) go “Ohhhhhhh!”. As if a firework display had suddenly gone off in the classroom. I enjoy teaching Science. I love the fact that children have endless fascination about information. It is brilliant to see the world through children’s eyes, to realise that just because we, as adults, know stuff, the whole world is new to them. I love teaching sport, specifically rugby (I will talk about this a bit more at morning line up tomorrow). In fact, I enjoy teaching most subjects – even the ones that I am no good at. You should see some of my art! However, i could never be a music teacher. I popped in to Professor Marvin’s music lesson this afternoon, and he was quite happy with the work that was going on. He had given the students five minutes to practise a musical piece. They were all practising at the same time! It sounded like this:

I have nothing but respect for anyone who can sit through that without going home every night with a headache! Of course, because I know nothing, and he is a better music teacher than I will ever be, the result of this cacophony was very impressive:

Oh, I was going to tell you a story about why W*dn*sd*y became W*dnesd*y, and how, six years ago on September 21st 2006 I made a decision to move to Mexico. But that might have to wait for another time. The pizza has just arrived and I am hungry!
Homework:

• Maths: Reteaching 3-4 Nos: 4 -> 9  Practice 3-4 Nos: 1 -> 10
• English: Spelling Workbook p. 14, 16
• Writing Assignment: Book Report (for Friday)
• Read: 20 minutes
• Homework Diary: signed
• LAPTOPS: fully charged and in school

(sing) Thursday

So, no blog post yesterday. Did you notice? I know that one person did, thanks for asking. There was no post yesterday because yesterday turned into “one of those days“. As you know (if you read Tuesday’s post) the students took their entrance exam to Instituto México. Obviously, the main aim of the sixth grade is to graduate in July, however that all becomes fairly superfluous if there is no school to graduate into. Thus the entrance exam looms very heavily of all of the work done in the first half of the academic year. We have worked very hard. If you were to check the books, you would see that we are already more than halfway through the English book and over halfway through the maths book. This is done on purpose. I am a great believer in setting big targets, but targets that are achievable. It is never my intention to just cover the work necessary for the exam, I quite happily aim to cover grade 7 and grade 8 work. If the students can work to that sort of high standard, then the actual entrance exam should present no difficulties. And it didn’t. Yesterday was full of stories about how easy the exam was, and how they never asked any of the stuff that we had covered, and how silly the students felt being all nervous “for that“. However, that was the idea, my cunning plan: prepare the students for an extremely difficult exam; get them into a certain mind frame for the exam; sit the exam. Of course, the results have yet to be released, but after four years of doing this I feel fairly confident. Plus, I know that the students have a good background now to go on and do well for the first couple of years, mathematically and in English.

All of this means that yesterday was a moment to slightly relax. For all of this year, so far, the students have been sat in rows with my desk at the back of the classroom. Now, for the first time I have grouped the desks, and put my desk at the front. This, of course, caused a certain amount of excitement. The pressure was off in the classroom, and look – I can talk to the person next to me, and can see the person opposite me. Yesterday was a very long day for me. As I hope I have implied, I am very pleased with the work the sixth grade have done, and am impressed with the attitude they have shown to hard work. Yesterday was my way of saying thank you and here’s your reward, you can sit in groups. It did mean though, that a lot of the day was spent on “crowd control” and “re-focusing”, which can be tiring, believe me. Plus, due to teacher absences, I ended up teaching an extra two hours on Wednesday. And there were exams to write, lessons planners to update. The long and the short of it is, when I got home last night I still had several hours of work to do, and by the time I finished I really didn’t fancy writing a blog (had to catch up with some Donkey Kong Country – I need some break from school work occasionally).

Wednesday, although tiring, was still a good day. We had a classroom discussing on bullying, and came up with some very interesting ideas. Sometimes it is easy to feel that we are bullied, but it becomes harder to see ourselves as bullies. However, once you define what bullying actually is, and then start to look at your own actions from the point of view of another, quite often it is possible to be a bully without realising it. It isn’t so much as “treat others as you would wish to be treated“, probably more of “if I was that person, is that how I would wish to be treated?”

Today, we continued with our new “fun” regime. I don’t get it – I’m pretty sure that school isn’t supposed to be fun! The morning was spent discussing homophones. This got slightly more confusing when one student chose to explain a word using another word that was also a homophone? Confused yet, I was. However, we did manage to get on to one of my favourite things: collective nouns. That gave me the chance to mention that the collection noun for a group of crows is a murder of crows – which is a fantastic expression. We also spent sometime practising “Sing” by My Chemical Romance. On Monday 31st January the sixth grade are presenting an assembly. As part of this we will sing “Sing”. I picked this song because I think it has a really good message, it is a very powerful song, and above all else it is fun. However, we are singing an edited version, I have decided to cut out the middle-rap-bit. Weirdly, this is the bit that the sixth grade sing the loudest! Grrr! I get the feeling that we are going to end up with twenty-one students stood on the playground, mumbling along to a song.

English Word of the Day. Mobile. In England a cell phone is called a mobile, mainly because it is mobile – you can take it wherever you want. The good news about England being so small is that it does have fantastic coverage, wherever you are.

Homework:

• Writing Assignment: Book Report.
• Endurance: find an example of an individual (or group of individuals) who have endured through hardship to achieve success.
• Reading Log: please get it signed so that it shows your parents have seen the Reading Log.
• Homework Diary: please get it signed.
• Reading: you should be reading for 20 mins every night.

(ohhhhh, I get it) W*dnesd*y

Teaching can be the best job ever. There are moments when you can stand at the front of the class and actually see teaching-in-action. Today I had one of those moments. One of those moments when, I finished teaching, turned from the board and just looked at the class. It wasn’t that you could see the light bulbs above their heads come on (because there aren’t actually light bulbs above their heads), but you could see the spark of recognition in their eyes. The best thing about the whole moment though is the sound. When you present something to a class, something that is difficult, there is a silence. No one wants to make a noise because it just draws attention to them, and if the subject is difficult, they don’t want attention coming their way. So students will sit in silence, hoping that they get it. And, when they do get it, they make a noise – no matter what their mother-tongue, they say: Ohhhhh. Probably the hardest thing I teach is subtraction of mixed numbers that include a decomposition (that’s subtraction-of-fractions-with-whole-numbers-that-includes-a-negative-fraction-that is bigger-than-the-positive-fraction). To actually do this operation involves two weeks of work, building each and every step along the way. It is a very logical step-by-step process, but if you fail to get one of the steps it is impossible. And, as far as I am concerned, it is the most complicated thing I will teach to the sixth grade this academic year. In fact, it wasn’t my intention to teach it today. With the exams looming, I was going to leave it to the other side of the exams, have a go, and then leave it until January, when a return to the subject might have meant a better understanding (two-times taught is more successful than first-time). But I had 15 minutes before the music lesson with nothing to do – it wasn’t worth starting a new topic – so I gave it a go.

And it was a total success.

No, seriously. Twenty out of twenty one students got the questions correct. They were so good at the topic before the music lesson that I decided to make myself a liar, and after promising them that I wouldn’t ask them any questions until next week, I hit them up with several questions today. And, BINGO. We have a bunch of mathematical wizards.

PE was spent in the classroom because of the weather. Music had some recorder playing that sounded excellent as I walked down the corridor. Maths was a total triumph. Recess was a disaster with Octavio managing to get his finger stuck in Daniel’s mouth (yes, I don’t get it either), and Gerry trying to stop Daniel from running across the playground, without realising basic physics: the force required to stop a body in motion needs to be greater if the mass of the opposing force is less. In other words: don’t get in the way of a person running at full speed if you are a lot smaller than them! Spanish was a preparation lesson for the radio broadcasts that they will be giving later. English was half a disaster as my workbook is totally different to everyone else’s workbook, and half a success as we finished the story…eventually, after Rodrigo managed to read four lines in ten minutes!

A good day over all.

And tomorrow is going to be even better! I am really looking forward to the trip, I love museums. I have been on the website and it all looks very exciting. Not too sure about the spider pavilion. I’m not very good about spiders, so I’ll probably have to stand behind some of the students and pretend to be brave. However, I’m hoping to get let loose to roam the rest of the museum. There will probably be lots of pictures, and I will try to write something. Maybe not tomorrow, because it is a long day, but over the weekend.

That said, don’t forget Reading Log numbers in on Friday!

Homework:

• Maths: Reteaching 4-3 Nos: 4,8,11,13,21  Practice 4-3 Nos: 1-7,9,11,18
• Reading Log: Numbers
  
• Homework Diary: Please get it signed.
• Reading: you should be reading for 20 mins every night.

(least said, soonest mended) W*dnesd*y

PE – Happy Birthday Professor Rodolfo.

Maths – homework checked. One student did the incorrect homework.

Music – Happy Birthday Miss Maria.

Maths – mixed numbers -> improper fractions and improper fractions -> mixed numbers.

Recess.

Spanish.

English – homework checked. One Two students didn’t do the homework. “Viva New Jersey” read.

Homework:

• Maths: Reteaching 3-8
• Spelling: Workbook pages: 23,24
• Homework Diary: Please get it signed.
• Science: DNA model. Be creative
• Reading: you should be reading for 20 mins every night.

(home alone) W*dnesd*y

My girlfriend has gone out. She’s headed off across the border to help friends get registered for the Sentri. This means that I am Home Alone. What to do? What to do? Over the weekend we visited (the same) friends’ house, and at the moment I have a stack (a stack) of Wii games in front of me. Most of the Mario collection, a couple of Lego adventures, Scrabble, and several other games. I also have to cook. This I don’t mind doing, in fact I enjoy cooking, but tonight I am cooking chicken marinaded in my secret mixture of herbs/spices/Lea&Perrins. This means that it has to sit in the fridge marinading for an hour or so – or until maria gets back. I’ve got one rugby game and a cricket match sat on my hard drive waiting to be watched. As far as school work goes, I’ve marked all the exams, calculated all the grades, put them into the school’s system, and written all my lesson plans for the month. What to do? What to do? Oh, I know. I’ll write a blog post.

At school we are Home Alone. What do I mean? Well, obviously you check the school’s website regularly (and by regularly, I mean twice a day), so you already know that Miss Lilian, Miss Monica, and Miss Marcela are away from school, because you read this. Of course, this does not mean that we are left with the choice of playing with the Wii, cooking, watching sport. No, school will (and does) carry on as normal. We started the day with exercises at morning line up. The sixth grade then went on to do PE.

PE was followed by Mr. Kay being grumpy for five minutes. One of the things I like about teaching older children is that the mundane tasks shouldn’t be a problem. We know that every day we have to get our Homework Diaries signed, Reading Logs are in every two weeks, Circulars need to be returned, and homework has to be done. However, this morning I only received 13 Homework Diaries, two students didn’t do their homework, five students did the wrong homework, I am still missing 7 Reading Logs, and have only received 13 replies about the trip to the museum. I think I was allowed my five minutes of grumpiness.

The music room is back up and running, so for the first time this year music happened in the music room, Yay! This gave me a chance to upload my grades, so those will be available online very soon (Friday I think). In the maths lesson we studied Scientific Notation. Although thee was a certain amount of panic as some students seemed to have bad memories of trying to learn it before, all went well and everyone was happy by the time recess came around. And that is when Octavio got stung by a bee. I say stung now, at the time I said bit (as in was bitten). I have been stung by a wasp, and it hurt. It hurt in a way that you cannot describe, with a pain that was very acute. But it hurt immediately, instantly. Octavio said he wasn’t hurt, and so I assumed that it was more of a bite than a sting. Except Bee stings are different to wasp stings, as I now know. Bee stings build up the pain. As time passes, it gets worse. Octavio went home.

English was all about Grammar today. Subjects and Predicates – simple and full. Followed by Sentences – Simple, Compound, Complex, and Compound-Complex. You know, on paper that looks very, very boring, and yet, in the classroom it was fun. Or I assume it was fun because a lot of students spent quite a lot of the lesson laughing.

Then it was home time, and this weird and wonderful weather had one last trick up its sleeve. No, not rain. Nor heat. This time the thermometer crashed out, and it was suddenly very cold stood on the pavement opening car doors. Right, time to hit Publish and get on with the rest of the day. Although, during the writing of this I went to the kitchen to get something, only to discover a line of ants. So, that’s decided what I’m doing for the next hour: trying to find out where they are coming from and try to change their minds.

Homework:

• Maths: Practice 3-2
• Spelling Workbook: pages: 15,16
• Homework Diary: Please get it signed.
• Writing Assignment: My Favourite Book (due Friday )
• Reading: you should be reading for 20 mins every night. (That’s 20 mins homework. Not including any time you have read in the classroom.)

(dentist) Wednesday

I’ve just been to the dentist. I know, I know. For you, visiting the dentist is no big deal but for me it is a huge ordeal. Yes, I live up to my national stereotype. I’m English and I have bad teeth. This means that I am really, really scared of dentists and will avoid going to see one at all costs. However, a friend had recommended Dr. Francisco Del Villar Luna on Alba Roja. So I went to see him. Can I just take this opportunity to say, he’s a very nice man. He speaks perfect English, tells some interesting stories, and is a wonderfully caring dentist. I didn’t feel a thing. More to the point, I am planning to go back to see him very soon. With that hurdle surmounted, onwards and upwards with my (second) blog post for the day.

The day started with me not talking to the morning line-up. Yes, I know that most mornings start that way, however I was convinced that I was supposed to talk this morning…and I didn’t. Ho hum. For a year I have followed Professor Rene, I talk the day after him. But now there are two fifth grades, I talk after Miss Irene. So, that means it is me tomorrow.

Most of today’s activities can be found somewhere around the internet. On youtube there are videos of the PE lesson where there was some basketball being practised.

There are also a couple of videos from the music lesson – one more successful than the other.

On Flickr there are pictures from the Spanish lesson, where Miss Claudia got to use the SMARTboard for the first time. And, in a much more exciting way than Mr. Kay, she also let the students write on the board too. If you click on the links, you should be able to see the busy day we’ve had.

Homework:

• Maths: Reteaching 2-1 Nos: (I can’t remember)  Practice 2-1 Nos: (can’t remember either but I know they are the substitution questions. Maybe someone could write the question numbers in the comments, please)
• Writing Assignment: Scared (due Friday )
• Grammar: Workbook pages: 10 and 11
• Reading: you should be reading for 20 mins every night.

(got stickers) Friday

This hasn’t been my best week of blogging, in case you haven’t noticed. It is sometimes hard to get home, from school, and sit down and immediately start blogging. This is even harder in an exam week, when I also have a huge pile of exams to mark and grade. I also have a life and out-of-school responsibilities – I know, I know, hard to believe – but this means that sometimes I don’t get straight home, or if I do, I change and go straight back out again! This is a sort of apology,to those of you who come here every day, expecting to read long boring interesting posts – I’ve been busy. Of course, those of you who just come here to check on homework, have probably been happy about the lack of posts – tee hee!

Anyway, I’m slightly torn at the moment, should I write a post OR should I play on the Wii OR should I put my stickers in my album? Yesterday, unfortunately, Nikos was off school, sick. How sick was he? Too sick to hold the controller on the Wii. His mum, the wonderful maria, therefore played Animal Crossing for him, following his directions. And the outcome of this? Well, Nikos is now well enough to go back to his dad’s house, but maria is now addicted to Animal Crossing. This means, that as I sit here, she is playing Hide-and-Seek with a pig and a bear. So, I can’t play on the Wii!

On the way home we stopped off at an Oxxo to pick up new batteries for the Wii controller (hmmmm???). We also bought some stickers for my FIFA World Cup Sticker Album. I haven’t had any new stickers since my birthday, and have had no swaps to exchange at recess for two weeks. However, I now have new stickers, and there are bound to be swaps! So, if you are reading this, and you collect World Cup Stickers, be prepared to bring them in on Monday. We had planned to go out tonight, we’d been invited to the opening of a new taco shop. We were very excited (or maybe, I was very excited, and maria was just happy), however it appears that we had the dates confused, and the opening is next Friday. So, I have nothing planned for Friday night. In that case, I’ll save my stickers until later tonight, and write a blog post now.

Monday it will be the sixth grade’s (final) assembly. We have been practising/learning/writing/rehearsing for this for two weeks. However, this is no time to relax. On the 21st June, we have our Final Presentation. Most classes will be doing a song. However, for the assembly we are doing a song (Umbrella by Rihanna), so I have decided that we would be better off doing a poem. However, I don’t just want to do a poem, I have this whole presentation in mind – anyone have a full sized mannequin at home that I could borrow? So that was how I spent the first lesson, while the sixth grade had PE, planning the next presentation.

We started the next lesson off with a quick run through of the assembly (there are some pictures up on my Flickr page). It went exactly the way I like rehearsals to go: there were loads of mistakes; no one stood properly; there were several mistakes in the dance. However, the things that went wrong are fixable (mainly by the pressure of a final performance), and the whole thing is still fresh, it isn’t over rehearsed. So, if you aren’t doing anything, Monday morning, 7:50am, pop in to school and see the sixth grade assembly. There are some great memories to be heard, and a very good dance routine to be admired (and I say that totally impartially).

The rest of the lesson was spent studying for the history exam (unless your name was Carlo Ivan, in which case it was spent doing the Science exam).

Geography exam on Monday, so we needed to do a quick study guide for that. Africa and South Asia. A huge amount of the world, all covered in one exam. So that is the sixth grade spending the weekend learning their countries/rivers/seas/lakes/mountain ranges.

Recess.

After recess I went to teach the third grade, while the sixth grade had music. I read them a story (the poem that the sixth grade will be doing for their presentation), and then we watched The Gruffalo. Afterwards they drew pictures of The Gruffalo (don’t you know? there’s no such thing as a gruffalo).

Last lesson of the day was a chance to return the science exams. Many of the sixth grade are “glasses half empty” people. They are never happy. Many students did really well in the exam (sixteen out of twenty-two got over 9.0), however there was upset and (almost) tears over perceived failure. Ah, maybe it was frustration at not achieving a perfect score. The Honour Guard got to practice for Monday, and we read some of “The American Slurp“.

Oh, there is no new Wall of Fame or 200+ Club this week. And, for once, it isn’t my fault. Only four students brought in their weekly scores.

Something New: Science: Six 10s. Ten scores of 9.0 or greater.

Favourite Moment Of The Day (FMOTD): Crazy Hair

The Third Grade really seemed to enjoy the poem that I read them!

Attendance: One absent

Homework:

• Reading Log
• Umbrella
• Reading: This is not an option. You should be reading 20 minutes every night.
• Geography: Exam Monday.
• Circular: Signed and returned

Right! Now it is time to kick maria off the Wii and start collecting some oranges – I’ve got a mortgage to pay off, donchuno!

(St. George’s Day) Friday

I was born in Sheffield, a city in the north of England. My passport says that I am a citizen of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. However, I always see myself as English, not British. From England, not the UK. Today, 23rd April, is St. George’s Day. St. George is the patron saint of England. The Cross of St. George (a red cross on a white background) is the flag of England. That explains why I am “flying the flag” on the top of this post. It also explains why I was wearing a white shirt with a red tie today!

23rd April is also the birthday of England’s greatest playwright, William Shakespeare. [It is also the anniversary of his death – bad news that, dying on your birthday.]

It wasn’t my turn to speak at morning line up, however as it is St. George’s Day I took the opportunity to give a quick lesson about The Union Jack.The Union Jack is the flag that most people associate with my country, as it is the flag of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is made up from three flags: The Cross of St. George (the patron saint of England); The Cross of St. Andrew (the patron saint of Scotland); and The Cross of St. Patrick (the patron saint of Ireland).

I did ask for the day off, you know, what with it being my country’s day of celebration. However, it was pointed out to me that I was working towards a Mexican passport, and had quite happily been taking Mexican National holidays. I then tried to point out that as I had dual citizenship that maybe I could have dual holidays? I worked today.

Not only did I have to work today, I had to work extra! Professor Rene was again absent, so while the sixth grade had PE, I had fifth grade maths. A successful lesson all round. The fifth grade can now name triangles in two different ways, and the sixth grade managed to get through a whole lesson with Professor Dandy, leaving him with a smile on his face.

A quick revision of Transformations: Translations, Rotations, and Reflections. Everyone seemed to understand what is required, so it was time to move on to a new topic, but that can wait until Monday. We put away our maths books and went onto the Grammar workbooks, to check how things had gone with “Who and Whom“. Last night, I had received an email from Guillermo in which he had actually used the word whom correctly. Plus, everyone had assured me at the end of yesterday’s lesson, that they knew what they were doing. We had to go through the questions.one.at.a.time. I was then assured that everyone definitely understood what we doing! A quick twenty questions later and…success! Twenty students got 16 or more correct! Time to move on again – spelling quiz!

Friday is the day that we take in the reading log pages. This has been a bad week in the classroom and I wasn’t holding my breath, waiting for big numbers. Scarlatte took advantage of the exams – with a chance to read after them – and a day off to post a huge number, but others also managed to do well. This week I have nine (nine) names on The Wall of Fame:

THE WALL OF FAME

1300 pages: Scarlatte

870 pages: Paulina R.

525 pages: Ana Elena

510 pages: Monica

411 pages: Valerio

372 pages: Alejandro

345 pages: Camila

330 pages: Miroslava

300 pages: Andrea

With another six students in the 200+ Club, it has been another excellent week for reading. Well done everyone!

After recess, music. Miss Maria decided to teach them a song on the recorder: Frere Jacque. It went so well that she taught it as a “round” – when one group finishes a part, another group starts. I was sat outside, in the playground, and must admit that the final practice session was note perfect. Unfortunately I didn’t video the final practice, I videoed this:

Then into the weekend! See you all on Sunday at the kermés.

Something New: St. George’s Day

Favourite Moment Of The Day (FMOTD): 870

Paulina R. is not someone you want to mess with! Several weeks ago, Ana Elena made a comment about how many pages Paulina had read, and (sort of) implied that she would never read more than Ana Elena. SInce then Paulina’s page counts have been:  427, 364, 351, 389, 387, and 310. These are excellent totals, and anyone achieving these totals should be content, happy with the amount they are reading. Not Paulina. Ana Elena has managed to stay just above (sometimes below) these numbers. This inspired Paulina to go on a crash reading course. The total for this week? 870. That’s eight hundred and seventy pages. On average, just over 120 pages a day. Excellent.

Attendance: All Present

Homework Notebooks: 22 out of 22 signed

Circulars signed: 17 out of 20

Homework:

• Keep writing blog posts
• Keep commenting
• PE uniform Monday
• Reading: This is not an option. You should be reading 20 minutes every night.