How Did I Pull That One Off?

I've decided to blog about my class I had today. Ms. Crosby came to evaluate me, and normally this would not bother me. I usually forget that she is there, and things go smoothly. I ALWAYS have everything planned just so in order to keep anything from throwing me off of my game. But when I woke up this morning and saw so much snow on the ground...I was a bit nervous.

I happened to see on the news that Cave City's buses were going to be running two hours late, and this made me feel a little better. After all, this wouldn't affect my evaluation now, right? My evaluation was scheduled for 11, and everything would go off just as I had planned. WRONG. I arrive at school at 9:30 only to find out that the school was not taking attendance today due to the fact that some roads were still icy and not all of the buses were able to make it to every house. This meant I was going to have absent students. A lot of them. My 3rd hour class was tiny. Of course I had a lot of absent students...just as I had expected. I knew that 4th hour, the class I would be evaluated in, would be the same way. Normally, this would not bother me. I would go about my plans, be evaluated, and everything would be okay. But not today. Today was peer review. Today was the day for the big workshop that I had planned so hard for, and now I would hardly have any students. Would this even work?

Students start coming in for 4th hour, and I have six. Six. This was less than half of my class. How am I supposed to work with this? As the students did their bellwork, I quickly rearranged group members so that everyone would be with an appropriate partner. I had to completely re-plan my grouping strategy and assign some students a new color. When I put students in groups, I give them colors so that they know how they should transition. For example, reds stay where you are, and blues go find your reds. I managed to pull it together, and class started. The students were wonderful. They were engaged, and my lesson went perfectly. Well...as perfectly as it could with half of my class gone. Ms. Crosby loved my lesson, and everything worked out. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to have a productive class with only six students. NO TIME WASTED HERE!!