CLAYMO Catastrophe

CLAYMO Catastrophe

By:Riley

Dec/10/2015

Twas’ the few long LONG hours before the end of school, It was a CLAYMO day and, as fifth graders we have the (Enormous) responsibility of leading a CLAYMO (Care Lots About Yourself And Many Others) Group. Now this all goes well when your group is calm… But  when they're not… Well, you'll’ find out.The night before we were given our CLAYMO lesson/script to read over at home. (I had sports practices until 7:00 plus the drive home so 8:00 so I [sadly] didn’t have the time to read over the lesson and I had no idea what to expect) I’m not going to explain me whole day to you so let's skip to the good stuff. The announcements come on and Mrs.Scott says “4th and 5th graders go to your single group classrooms.” and the 5th grade hall becomes the 5th grade Death trap everyone is racing in and out of classrooms grabbing their lanyards and buckets and kids headed to their claymo rooms with their supplies. me and lilly (my CLAYMO group leader partner) head to Mrs.Schuh’s classroom. And, She had a sub. Subs don't get the computer so we didn't know how we were going to play the video (But we had that conversation in the hallway [forgetting that Mrs.Miller comes down and helps with the group]) we walk into the classroom and find Mrs.Miller standing there with the computer AND with the video pulled up I asked her to plug the computer into the (not so) smart board and I sat down In the red rocking chair by the rug and wait for everyone to come down to the classroom when everyone got there we started with the CLAYMO promise “I promise to take good care of myself, all the people around me and all the things around me”. Then I realised that for some (unknown) reason a fourth grader came in with a notebook that he was sitting there and drawing in it NOT EVEN LISTENING TO THE LESSON. We stopped and turned on the video with the librarian Ms.Hagene reading the shortened version of the Tale of Despereaux but there was light coming from the window brightening the screen so the class couldn't see I tried to cover it up as much as I could but some of the kids in the class were getting frustrated with me because they couldn't see the LEAST IMPORTANT PART OF THE SCREEN so I moved back and sat on a stool and tried to cover it up with a piece of paper, didn’t work so the sub came up behind me took the paper held it up AND IT WORKED but her arm got tired… but apparently there was blinds on the window that she put down, problem solved. but the screen was all bright, I really didn’t want to fix it so we left it the way it was.We assigned jobs and lilly helped the kinder gardeners write the title of the poster. when they were done they went to the carpet to write different examples of courage on a paper that we would glue onto the poster. But kindergarteners don't want to do that, they want to do somersaults! As they did that (and lilly allowed it) everyone else worked on the poster. One by one the kids working on the poster left until it was just  me, a 4th grader, a 3rd grader, and a 2nd grader. at the very last moment we glued the last piece of paper on.

This CLAYMO lesson was very hectic, confusing, annoying, and frustrating.

As a CLAYMO leader I think that I need to  work on controlling the class, I did a very bad job on that. I also need to work on communicating with my partner.