FRIDAY,
FEBRUARY 7, 2014
Weekly
Recap
Monday:
Something big has happened! I finally gave a spelling test, nobody
panic! After announcing the schedule for the kids and settling them
into the Monday routine, I administered the spelling pretest. I had
observed my master teacher giving one before and pretty much knew the
drill...and let's face it, giving a spelling test finally made me
feel like a teacher. When I was little and would play dress up I
would walk around with a clipboard and write down interesting words I
saw off of the television then later I would test myself and, of
course, all of my stuffed animals. So this spelling test was a big
deal, this was everything I had been waiting for. And it was
wonderfully awkard...practice makes perfect.
Tuesday:
I lead the class through the weekly reading, which was a wonderful
story about an author and what she does with her spare time. I was
able to introduce the new vocabulary words and while defining them
for the classroom I had the students create movements or show my with
their bodies what each of the five words meant. (This came in handy
later. :)) After listening to the audio tape of the story I lead the
class in a discussion about the short piece and had them complete a
graphic organizer. Overall, despite being sick to my stomach, it was
a great day. This kids were attentive and very invested in their own
learning.
Wednesday:
What a great day! There were a lot of successes throughout the day,
including the reading portion. I was in the middle of assigning
sections of the story to each student so that could practice what
they were going to be reading. I had them read their assigned section
to a partner and made sure if they had any questions they were
comfortable asking. While I was walking around helping a few students
with pronounciation and other common issues that readers struggle
with, a strange man in a suit walked in and planted himself at the
back table. Ok. No one panic. After about 6 or 7 minutes I had the
students read the story out loud while others were following along
with their finger. The strange man pulled out a pen and paper. He's
writing notes. Time to panic. After the story was finished and the
students were on their way out to recess, my master teacher
introduced me to the man who does all of the hiring for the district.
Yikes, good thing he observed me during a fun lesson. (That was
sarcasm.) He gave me his notes, which despite being such a boring
lesson, were all positive.
Thursday:
Today I introduced alliterations to the class. They started out on
the ramp in a line and I explained that I hada surprise for them and
all they had to do was pick a piece of paper out of the bucket. The
papers each had a seperate letter of the alphabet. I explained the
concept, using a few of my own creative examples (which had a
student's name in each of them) and they thought that my examples
were hilarious. They kept giving me letters so that I could create a
new sentence. After some suspense was built I allowed the students to
create their own sentences. I also reminded them they had their
spelling dictionary in their desk and that they should open them up
to their assigned letter so that it would help think of words. I
listed the instuctions of the board so that I was not answering the
same question over and over. 1. The sentence must be at least five
words long. 2. The sentence must contain at least three words that
start with the same letter. 3. Have fun. The kids had so much fun
with this assignment. They were also given the opportunity to draw a
picture of what their sentence represented, but only after they had
correct spelling and the sentence met the rules. Such a fun day!
Friday:
Art Day! I lead the kids through a Burton Morris inspired art lesson.
I will post photos of them, they look amazing on the wall display.
Another important note: I dominated the tether ball court during free
choice recess. It must be my amazing athleticism...or that I'm about
3 feet taller than my opponent. I can't be sure.
FRIDAY,
FEBRUARY 14, 2014
Weekly
Recap
Monday:
No school! Sigh.
Tuesday:
Today we started the assessment for the second trimester. This test
was done during the first hour of school, when the kids were most
likely to try their very best. The questions were read out loud so
that the assessment would not be a reading test but more a
comprehension check. We also reviewed for the math test that we would
be taking on Wednesday. And last but not least, we had parents come
in after lunch to help with an art project that they wanted the kids
to be a part of. Oh and for the kicker, Grandma Kay, the parents, and
myself all had a seperate activity for the kids..only mine was
whole-class instruction. It's ok if you want to pray for me.
Wednesday:
Second day of testing...the kids knew what to do. (Smarty Pants –
the lot of them). My favorite activity of the day was the Valentine's
Day Acrostic poem that I had found on Teacherspayteachers.com. I
started this lesson by reading a Valentine's Day book that I checked
out from our school library which the kids took a liking to. Then we
reviewed what an acrostic poem was and with the use of the Smartboard
began filling out the poem together. Note: I asked the students what
they knew about acrostic poems...that way my silly brain could figure
out how to explain them to my students in language that they would
understand. Tricky, tricky.
Thursday:
Today was so much fun! My first field trip with my kiddos and we went
to the firestation and the police station. The kids were such a joy
to be around and they were so excited to be a part of this day. I was
a proud teacher watching them ask great questions and just be amazed
at all they were learning. I don't want to leave this class. No way.
No how.
Friday:
It's Valentine's Day. Oh. My. Word. I'm not sure i've every seen such
excitement from anyone in my life. The kids were so happy about
celebrating the holiday and I was happy that they were able to have a
mental break from testing and learning. Now...don't get me wrong, it
was an exhausting day and I dragged myself to bed that night, but it
was so much fun. There is one thing that I must mention. On
Wednesday, during the math test, I had a few students who did not
listen to instruction and as a result scored pretty low on the test.
And by a few, I really mean about half. In their defense, the math
test was set up so that if the students did not read every single
instruction then they were not going to recieve great scores.
However, I did point out the importance of reading directions so it
was their decision after that. Due to poor scores I gave the students
an opportunity to retest at the beginning of the day. Half of them
attempted a new test and half of them worked on a Valentine's Day
themed word search. Result: better test scores!
FRIDAY,
FEBRUARY 21 , 2014
Weekly
Recap
Monday:
Holy potatoes! My first Monday of solo week was so easy...well we had
the day off.
Tuesday:
Now we get down to the real stuff. My first real day of teaching was
intense. I had to be mindful of my time management during tasks and
it was, at times, pretty difficult. I didn't realize that I could
juggle so many activities. We began our testing again, which was the
third day alltogether, so the students knew exactly what to do. My
favorite part of the day was writing thank you letters to the police
station. Once again, so that I could understand how to explain the
activity, I asked my students what made up a great thank you letter.
The students understood what was expected of them, but I did not give
enough time for the students to finish their illustrations. Also,
this week is National Acts of Kindness Week so I took some time today
to discuss what that meant. I tied in A.R.K. (Acts of Random
Kindness) and explained that I called this week A.R.K. Week because
it reminded me of the good deed that Noah did during the biblical
times. Yes, I talked about the Bible – from a historical
perspective.
Wednesday:
Today was the day for second chances. It was a new day and I was
ready to tackle all of the challenges. We wrote thank you letters to
the fire station and we briefly reviewed what made up a good thank
you letter. We didn't need to spend much time on explaining the
acitivity today so the students had a longer time to finish their
assignment. Because we were in the middle of A.R.K. Week the whole
class did an act of random kindness for another person. Today we gave
pencils to a randomly selected class on campus. I put all of the
teacher's names into a big bucket and had the classroom helper of the
day pick out a name. Then during the first portion of math time we
lined up and headed over to do our good deed. (I checked with that
teacher ahead of time.) The kids dropped off their pencils and left
with giant smiles on their faces. Afterwards we settled back into
class and we had a short discussion on how they felt after doing
their random act of kindness.
Thursday:
For A.R.K. Week we decided to clean up the school in a new way. Each
classroom has a barrel that hold the basketballs, foursquare
balls,etc. The students in my class went outside and returned any of
the classroom's balls that were not their own. The whole task took
about 20 minutes and the kids were able to do their good deeds as
well as get their wiggles out at the same time. Yay! After that we
came back to class and focused on our kindness acrostic. Because we
had already done an acrostic last week I was able to build upon some
of those skills. I wanted my students to understand that while they
needed to start each letter with the letter on the line, they also
needed to make sure that all the lines connect to a central theme. My
class absolutely understood the idea of what an acrostic poem is
supposed to look like. -Celebrate-
Friday:
My last day of my first solo week and I am exhausted. We finished up
the week by writing about all that we accomplished during A.R.K.
Week. I let all the students understand my expections of the
assignment and they knew how to accomplish the requirements. We
brainstormed before we began writing so the children had plenty of
things to write about and I required that they finish their writing
so that they might publish their piece. They all worked very hard and
I could tell that they were excited about their writing. Guess what?
I'm still alive.
FRIDAY,
FEBRUARY 28, 2014
Tuesday:
Today was very tiring, we had a lot of things to do in what seemed
like a very short time. Like I said, I am working on getting better
at time managment. Today we read our main selection in our language
arts textbook titled "Head, Body, Legs". We listened to the
story from an audio book and completed a graphic organizer. This
week I tried something a little different with our weekly vocabulary
words. Instead of just having the children memorize the definition I
also had them put an action with each of the words. It helped the
students retain the meaning of the word. We finished the day with
science by drawing the progression of a fossil buried deep
underground.
Wednesday:
Well...today could have gone better. I fully expected my supervisor
to be observing from 12:30 – 2:00 and it made me nervous. She
stayed for the langauge arts portion which of course was the worst
lesson of the day. But that's ok, she still left me really good marks
and honestly she saw what I could have done better. At the end of the
day we read about how paleontolgist dig up fossils and how careful
they needed to be. Then the fun began! My master teacher and I had
covered up previsouly made clay molds of dinosuars with coffee
grounds and passed them out as well as paintbrushes so that the
children could uncover their own fossil. It was an absolutly perfect
lesson. The kids had fun. I had fun. It was great.
Thursday:
The highlight of my day was the science rotation that I was able to
teach. My university supervisor came again for observations so I was
a little nervous...but because it was not my own class I was pretty
excited. I was more focused on the challenge that a new class brought
than being nervous about my own lesson. To begin my lesson I acted
like a crazy scientist and the new students were very unsure how to
react. I needed to ditch my crazy disguise so I walked out the door
and came back in without my crazy scientist goggles. I came in
warning my students about my twin sister. They loved it and from that
moment on were very engaged in the lesson. However, my favorite part
of the lesson was at the very end when the helper from my new class,
who is also a Grandma from the helper program, came up to me, gave me
a kiss on the cheek, and said that I would make a fantastic teacher.
Joy
Friday:
It's Friday! We always have a crazy day on Friday! I did need to
complete the math lesson that we did not get to because I wanted a
full day for math review. Here's the situation... the students were
really overwhelmed with one of the math concepts. So instead of
handing them a new lesson to learn the very next day, I decided to
spend a day with whiteboard review. I walked through each and every
step of three digit subtraction and made sure that all of my students
were comfortable with the concept. A great end to a great week.
