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Today was the first day back after our winter holidays. It wasn't too taxing~while I had developed lesson plans for these two days back, we didn't get to them. I spent part of each class period reviewing some old/new policies and rules. Don't we all seem to forget so soon what we have to do or what we shouldn't do? After the review, we had our annual Spelling Bee. After twenty-two years with seventh-graders, I'm still amazed at the spelling skills (or lack thereof) of thirteen-year-olds. The ones who can barely keep their grades in the black are some of the ones who can spell the best. Why is that? Spelling is a skill that does take knowledge of our language~so why doesn't that transfer into other areas of my curriculum? Speaking of curriculum~count down to standardized testing (sort of). I've been looking at the performance indicators and trying to determine which ones need to be taught in depth and which ones can be barely brushed upon. The stude...