Fire drill!

Wow! I wish I would have had the chance to video tape the whole school during the fire drill today. As soon as it went off there was not a single word from any student. No yelling or screaming they immediately got in a line to go down our six flights of stairs. They let us younger grades out first and then the older students follow. I could not believe how great they were. It wasn't just my class it was literally the whole school. I have been in a lot of schools where the fire drill as gone off and it is NOTHING like it here. I mentioned to my teachers how great it is and they said they do practice but so do schools in Minnesota. Apparently they have to do ten practices by the end of December and this is either number four or five. 


Best of all one of my teachers was getting observed during the math lesson when the fire drill went off. Surprisingly though the kids came back into the classroom and went back to where they were. Since this is one of my teachers first years she needed to be observed to make sure things were going well. From what I noticed throughout the mini lesson before our groups things were going well for her. After the mini lesson and fire drill we broke off into the three groups again to continue working on fact families. We had one sum to start with and then were stressing the importance of finding all the fact families with the same sum. The students were working together on a couple of sums to find the fact families. They then had to come up with their favorite fact family. Today went a lot better with the control of the students because I feel like they are getting used to me and helping as well as teaching in a small group. I haven't really been able to find out exactly what I am doing in the small group until earlier in the day so I don't get a chance to write a mini lesson for the teaching. 


There were lots of future kindergarten parents here today getting a tour of the school and wow there was a variety of parents. It makes since though when a lot of the students come from other countries. For example in my classroom I have students from Australia and was born in Singapore, a student from Hong Kong, and India. Overall, a good day at Dwight!


My sister met me at school as she just arrived today. I and the other girls were able to bring her around on the subway and it was very hot today. Since it was already fairly nice outside plus all the people scrunched it became warm very quickly. 


Megan wanted to find a library where she could get a library card to read Maze Runner (a book she had started at a library in Minnesota). We did find a library - The New York Public Library - which you can't check out any books. This library is more for show but absolutely gorgeous. 


Once we got through dinner we ended up heading back for an early night. We decided to try something different as to getting back to the hotel. Sometimes the shuttle isn't available until later in the night so we thought we would try the local bus. We heard we can use our metro cards on the bus just like we do on the Subway so we thought why not try and learn. It ended up taking about forty minutes to get back to our hotel once we got on the bus but we were one of the last people on the bus because of all the stops. 


The plan is to go to bed early and get some sleep. Tomorrow school gets out at 2:30 instead of 3:00 like most days. Also tomorrow the rest of my family is visiting so this weekend will be very busy. Can't wait!


-Heidi :)


Photos courtesy of my sister Chirstie