Solo Teaching

I taught all my classes by myself today and, unlike my last attempt at solo teaching, it went pretty well! Of course, it helped that a) I *knew* I was going to be teaching alone before class started and didn't spend the first ten minutes of the class wondering when the other teacher was going to show up and b) it was fifth and sixth graders, not third graders. I see the older kids twice a week, not twice a month, and they have a much larger vocabulary. Plus, the lessons are a bit formulaic, so it's not like they didn't already know what to do. The classes were a bit rowdier than usual, but that could just as easily be because it was snowing. Actually, since the rowdiest kids were the ones sitting next to the windows, I'm pretty sure it was the snow. What 5th grader isn't excited about the first snow of the season?