Technology Troubles and Great Ideas

I ran into a bit of a frustration today with technology. I spent all this time working on making these index card rings for my lowest reading group, I saved it as a PDF, sent it to myself, went to print it off in the office where there's a colored printer, and it didn't send it. I come back to the room to find that something new needs to be installed in order for it to work. It worked last week, why can't it work today? I had such good ideas too, but stupid technology has once again gotten in the way. I don't have the authority to load it into the computer either. Now I don't know what I'm going to do. Part of my thinks that it doesn't matter because I only have this group one more time because of Acuity this week, and then Krista and I are switching groups. I'm going to take the fifth graders and she's going to take the sixth. I really like my kids. I'm not excited to start all over with new groups.

Why does this job have to be this way? Why can't there be some consistency to keep me sane? I was starting to get comfortable, and now they're mixing it up again! Ha. I guess I'll just have to readjust all over again. The kids I'll be switching to are much lower than they should be. One group is at a level K. At the end of the year, fifth graders are supposed to be at a level T. So there's a lot to do. From my experience so far, level M is the hardest hump to get over. I would love to at least get them to the hump, even if we can't get over it. We'll see.

My vision for the index card rings is each card having one of ten skills/strategies that "Good Readers" have and use. I've created a page of these with a brief blurb about each

I want to laminate the cards, punch them, put them on the ring. On the lined side, after they are laminated, students can write examples as we discuss them in reading groups with a fine-tipped permanent marker. I also want to include a laminated orange index card labeled: My Reading Goals. Students can write their goals for the rest of the school year. These can be to reach a certain F&P level (the A-Z scale), how many extra minutes they want to spend reading each night to improve, mastery of a certain skill/strategy, etc. These  cards will be easy to carry from place to place and will help them keep track of the things good readers do! Now that I think of it, this may be really good for the struggling fifth graders. So maybe it's okay I'm being thwarted right now in completing them.

I'm super excited for these to become real. However, this will require me figuring out how to get them to a color printer and learning to use the laminater. Oh well. I'm always up for learning new things! I'll also need to get more index cards. I don't have enough 3x5 sized ones. We have a lot of 5x7 that I could cut, but that would be so much work! :) We'll see.

Well, I need to get to work at Ruby's, then I'm going to go home and figure out what I want to eat. I'll probably fill up on biscuits at work like I usually do, but I'll still be able to get something else in me I'm sure. Everyone knows how I can eat. I'll also enjoy some of the gingerbread cookies Kal and I made the other night. I found a roll of dough at Owen's for $0.99 after Christmas and the Pillsbury dough boy sure does know how to do it! We were are loving them!

He started Insanity at 6 this morning at the rec with some of his housemates.I'm so proud. As I had trouble getting out of bed before 8. Sigh. Ah well, maybe tomorrow I'll go myself?

Like everything else in this post: we'll see.