Today's Conundrum

Mornings are such a pleasure in my classroom. We have a smooth structure that we all count on. We work on core subjects that I love to teach. We see our progress in measurable ways that encourage continued effort. Then over the lunch recess something strange happens. We still have structure and subjects that I love to teach, but something I can't quite identify sneaks into the classroom and picks at us all. Our attention spans are shorter, our fuses are shorter, and our interest in putting in effort is sapped away.

I don't know how to catch this sneaky learning-sapper and kick it out of our classroom. It is causing me great frustration. We can't just do PE, art and music everyday after lunch, that's half the day. How to recapture my students' interest and compete with hunting for wood ticks...