Day from hell

Today was a rough day.  My principal asked us last minute to retest the students that failed our benchmark test.  We decided to pull the students during the day so that only those students would miss class.  This created a catastrophe. The room we were supposed to be in was booked, so the teacher that was pulling them sent the students back to their original classroom.  I had to stop my class to go down and talk to the teacher that was in the room we were supposed to be in and see if she wouldn't mind moving.  Thankfully she agreed, but then I had to collect all the students and tag team teach with that teacher that was originally pulling the students. Then when everything settled down, in walks our SBTS (School Based Technology...something) with a broken netbook.  One of the students dropped it.  My heart plummeted.  Those things are so expensive and I was terrified I was going to get yelled at. The day just continued to get worse.  My only bright spot in the day was the normally chaotic intervention time.  I typically leave that 30 min. block stressed out and feeling like a failure because the students still do not get it. (This intervention block is made up of my remedial students, special ed, and my low ESOL students.)  I decided that today I was going to use my new ELMO to model multiplication of fractions. I noticed from the quizzes that I gave and the benchmark test that the students were able to compute the problem, but could not show visually and describe what it actually means. Using my ELMO,  I was able to draw/color and use pattern blocks to show what I am doing when I multiply fractions and why the product is smaller.  At the end, it seemed the majority of the students were able to complete one fraction problem independently.  Tomorrow I will continue working on this and see if there is any retention.  I am hoping that by the end I can give them completed shaded in blocks that they can they identify the problem and create a word problem from it.  *Fingers crossed*.