Last Day!

I can’t believe it’s my last day today. I’m not exactly sure of the plan for the day except that I am observing Kindergarten at 2:30. I have mini lessons ready to go just in case and I will be ready to do morning meeting since it’s Friday and the kids get to choose the greeting and activity. The afternoon should be easy, and I have a feeling there is some sort of surprise planned for me at some point, from some of the things kids said throughout the week. The principal came in this morning to see how I was doing and gave me the write up from when he observed me. My CT seems to be busy this morning and hasn’t been in the room much.

The morning went by as usual. My CT ran morning meeting and all of the lessons, so it was pretty easy. Lots of kids gave me hugs when they came in today and one girl even got me a sticker book. It was really cute! I wore a blue star since today is class color day and our class picked to wear the color blue. It’s pretty cool because everyone came in wearing blue today.

In the afternoon, my CT told me to go make copies of something. When I came back, the class was all hiding and they surprised me with cupcakes and a huge bag of gifts. It was adorable and so much fun! I was really touched ☺ This experience has been amazing and I can’t wait to have my own class.

Last Thursday

Today I did some teaching in the morning and observed the rest of the day. I went over to observe another first grade teacher during the morning as well. It was interesting to see how she worked her Daily 5 and guided reading. I feel like her guided reading style would probably suit me better than the way my CT does it. Instead of having them all read the same book at the same time, she had each group member reading a book at their level silently. When they were stuck on a word they let her know and she would work it out with them. After they finished a book, she would have a book talk with them asking who was in the book, when it happened, what happened, where it happened, the problem and the solution. If they couldn’t give a good answer to anything she had them reread it. The kids seemed really focused. I asked her how she knows if they skip words or if they are really reading it. She said they have to be able to answer the questions, and they know that they have to ask themselves if the words match and make sense. If not they need to go back. They practice those strategies a lot in the beginning of the year.

I did two mini lessons this morning and ran yellow group. My minis were on the y sound at the end of words and on fantasy vs. reality. They went really well. The kids liked these fantasy vs. reality task cards that I had. I didn’t print them out; I just used the pdf file and put them up on the Smartboard. It worked really well and if I do a mini tomorrow, I may use other task cards in the same way. I have some more for fact vs. opinion that are really cool.

I can’t believe tomorrow is my last day. I’m excited but also kind of sad about that. I love the kids in my class and have really had so much fun being here. I can only hope to have a class as good as this one when I start teaching.

Quiet day

I wasn’t quite sure which lessons I’m doing in the morning today, so I over planned a little bit. It was lucky because my CT did think I was doing all of the mini lessons. I also came in early to work on guided reading and grab a few more books for that. That was helpful today when I pulled two guided reading groups. I did a lesson on cause and effect using the Smartboard, one on summarizing a story using the book we read on Monday, and one on Fact vs. Opinion. They all went well and the class was pretty good for me today. My CT needed to leave the room and go on a conference call so I had another teacher in the room with me for a bit and they were great. I don’t really understand it, but they seem to behave better for me when my CT is not in the room. This is frustrating because I feel like she sees more of the bad than the good. But, I got my evaluation from her today too and it was really glowing, so that was really nice to read. She also wrote me a letter of recommendation that is fantastic. I’m really relieved about all of that. She is going to email it to me so that I have it.
It was nice to observe most of the afternoon today too. I got to see how my CT does Problem Solving, which is a math program we do on Wednesdays. I started it, so I hadn’t seen her do a lesson with it yet. She did it the same way I did, but added a few helpful hints. She also reviewed homework with them, which was something I hadn’t done. They have all been doing well on their homework anyway, but it probably was a good idea to expose them to it first. The problem is just like the two examples done in class.

My favorite part of the day was writing young authors books. The class started publishing their first few pages into their real books from their dummy books. They are looking really great. I like the way they are working on them. Now they will start doing 3 pages at a time in the dummy book, then publishing three pages, going back and forth until they are finished.

At the end of the day, we were coming back from music. Music is outside in the trailers so we always have trouble coming into the building without running. I told them that if they could walk all the way back to the classroom without running, we’d play a game. Luckily, that worked and we resumed out game of 7-up that we didn’t get to finish yesterday.

Observing 4th and 6th

I did lots of observing today, which was a nice break and extremely interesting. The day started with a great meeting and presentation about using vocabulary in lessons, especially for ELL students, but really for everyone. She gave some fantastic ideas about how to do that. Her presentation was fantastic and it will be on the intranet. I plan on downloading it while I have access to it and saving that. After morning meeting this morning, I went to 4th grade to observe a math lesson. They are using a new math program in the upper grades so that was interesting to see. It is a Smartboard integrated program called enVision math. The lessons are done step by step on the Smartboard, with a vocab, a lesson, guided practice, and individual practice. The focus was much more on content than on management, which is a big difference from 1st grade. I like the way the tables were organized – clusters of desks. I noticed that she differentiated by letting anyone having trouble with the individual assignment to come work with her in a guided practice at the board. The only trouble was that the students that finished early had nothing to keep them occupied after so the room got a little loud.

In the afternoon, I observed a 6th grade math class. I think it’s funny how all the teachers seem to want me to observe during math time. This was a class mixed up of all the 6th grade students, who have different homeroom teachers. It seems like they start mixing up the classes a bit to get them ready for Middle School. The 6th graders were using laptops for math class. The teacher instructed them using the Smartboard on where to go and how to play a few of the game she wanted them to play – on angles, measuring with a protractor, and symmetry. Then they were called by row to go get a laptop from the laptop cart, which is shared throughout the school. They all worked individually on their assignment. All of them seemed to be on task and the teacher circulated around the room helping students, giving pointers, and asking which games they liked the best and why. I was impressed with her use of technology, though I wish I had gotten to see a little more instruction.

When I got back, our first graders were doing pattern blocks for math. I helped check work as they went along. Then we all took a picture, which I am using as part of my gifts to the class, before I took them to library. When they got back, we played 7-up until buses were called.

Monday with a 2nd Grade Observation

The day started off slightly better. Morning meeting went pretty well and I ran the first few mini lessons. It was good to finally be back to a normal schedule this afternoon, now that PSSA is over. The afternoon was interesting because I observed a second grade math lesson. It was really nice to see how another class was set up and how it worked. I liked her classroom setup with desks instead of tables. I also liked the class marble idea. The teacher started with an empty jar of marbles, and if the class id doing well, they can add marbles. If they are not, they take away marbles. If the jar gets full, the class wins a party. It was also interesting to see how she differentiated activities and handled giving multi-step directions. She repeated the three steps, had them repeat it 3 times, then had two students stand up and recite the directions. She put on some quiet music while they worked, that seemed to keep them a little calmer. She had 3 different activities. The first was a quiet game in pairs. The second was an individual worksheet and the third was another worksheet, which she had differentiated. She placed two different worksheets on the ground and put Popsicle sticks with students’ names underneath the one that they should be doing. She also explained that if one seems easier than the other, it’s not because some people are not smart or not good at math, it just means it’s what’s right for them. I asked her why she explained it and she said she got a letter from a parent saying that her student came home saying that he always gets harder papers than everyone else. She asked what would happen if she got a paper that was too hard – they’d get frustrated. What if it was too easy? They’d zip through it in a second. She said this is the paper that is right for you. I also liked her technique when the Smartboard wasn’t working of asking them to send positive energy to the Smartboard as she was working on it. They all held out their hands at the board. It gave them a thought to think about and something to occupy them until it worked. I also really liked her energizer activity that she did before the lesson. The class is making up a class dance and they add steps to it every once in a while. They just count and on each number they have another dance move that they do.

St. Patrick's Day

This morning went well! The kids seemed to be in a good mood and they were calmer. My CT had green chocolate coins that she put on everyone’s desk for St. Patrick’s Day. They were excited and I was worried that it would start the day off on a crazy note, but it actually was fine. I reminded them that they needed to do all of their morning jobs if they wanted to eat their chocolate. They did a really good job and all of them were working on their morning work when it was time for them to meet for morning meeting. They all go into the circle quickly and we did a fast “Top of the Morning” greeting for St. Patrick’s Day. We played 4 Corners for ST. Patrick’s Day too since our 4 corners are St. Patrick’s Day related. We have spring, flowers, leprechaun, and 4 leaf clover. The game went well and they were good. We did two rounds before it was time to line up for art. At that time, one girl pushed to get to the front of the line. She fell down and go upset. She is already in trouble for hitting and hurting other kids and she knows she needs to be at the end of the line all week anyway. I told her this and she got angry. She hid in the corner of the room. My CT didn’t step in this time, and I was proud of myself that I got her to move. I told the class to go ahead to the first stopping point, and I was glad she followed the class after they left.

I went to go pick up the class at art and it was a madhouse. There was a volunteer in from Art Goes to School and they were writing a story about a painting. It seemed fun but they were all yelling and calling out and screaming! The volunteer read me the story they created and it was really cute. We got them in line and after a few minutes, finally got them to quiet down. I told them they needed to be really quiet in the hall because PSSA testing was going on. I was glad they seemed to calm down quick and I read them a story for the 6-7 minutes we had until it was time for recess.

The rest of the day was kind of a blur. We did Daily 5, which went well except for one round. I met with red group and two students on either side of the table were giving me trouble. I gave them a book about a crab and one said it made him seasick. The other one was just looking for attention so he kept hitting the book on the table and saying “ow.” Then I said we needed to get through the book and they both sat on the floor. I gave them the choice of sitting on their chair or reading it in time out. One sat up, the other didn’t. He then got upset saying we always read and never do activities in that group. I told him we never do activities because we can’t get through a book first. I said if we got through the book, we’d do an activity. Instead, he got really upset, and went to time out, saying he was going to stay there forever. My CT went to talk to him but he didn’t tell her why he was upset. I talked to him afterwards and her too and he finally came back when we started writing. We did a fun writing exercise where they got to write about either finding a four leaf clover or a leprechaun.

At the end of the day, we went out with the rest of the first grade classes to play dodgeball. It was so nice outside! That was really fun and we all had a great time. When we came in one teacher asked me to sit with her class for a few minutes because she needed to do something. I did and I was proud to go in and get them involved playing a game of 7-up before they called buses. When the teacher came back, everything was quiet and calm. She thanked me. That was a nice end to the day.

Wednesday

This morning was interesting because the school had a staff meeting with the superintendent about next year’s budget. It wasn’t a big surprise that there is a deficit and there will be cuts throughout the district next year. I was noticing my problem with time outs a little more. I have trouble because every student starts talking at once and I’m not sure who started it. Then if I redirect them and get them all quiet, they are usually all doing the right thing until it breaks down again. It seems like it’s all or nothing and I have a hard time getting it to a point where they are mostly good with only a few calling out for a sustained amount of time. I do feel like a I would use a slightly different behavior management system. I have been reading about a bunch of other ideas on some teacher discussion boards online and I feel like some of them may work better for me than the system in place in my current classroom. I would like to try new things, but I feel like my last 1 and a half weeks here is not a good time to start a new plan. I plan on mapping out my own plans and coming up with a system that will fit my own teaching style better in my own classroom.

Meanwhile, my CT was filling out my final evaluation form throughout my class and it was nerve-wracking. My morning was better than yesterday morning but I felt like I was being watched the whole time. When they all came in from gym, they all wanted a drink of water. I told them to line up quietly and get one drink then go right back into the classroom. My CT was impressed that it worked so well, but she gave me some tips for next time – to have a teacher helper go back and count, giving them each 3 seconds, then by calling them to go one row at a time. I didn’t think of that at the time, but I’m glad it didn’t lead to chaos.

The rest of the afternoon went pretty smoothly. I ran my last pit lesson today on the American Flag and it went really well. The kids were fascinated by the pictures of old flags and how it has changed through the years. They also really liked learning about the rules for the flag and how it needs to be raised and lowered and things like that. I also had a flag concentration game that they loves, as well as websites that show the flags for every country and every state. They were amazed to see all those flags. I emailed the websites to all of the teachers so they could look more closely in their own classroom.

The day came to an end fast. We played a shape song about 3D shapes that I found on YouTube. It was great! It’s a catchy song, but not annoying, and all the kids were singing it by the end. It was posted by a kindergarten teacher, and lots of teachers commented how they liked it. Finally, we made 3D shapes together out of paper. The kids had some trouble with them at first, but we all did one together in a circle first and that let them get the hang of it. Once they figured them out and finished one, they were able to come up and choose another one to do independently. They had fun and figured out that they could put a triangular prism on top of a cube to make a house. One student even started to make a stage and a band playing on it with his 3D shapes. That was impressive, especially because we was close to tears a few minutes before thinking he couldn’t do it. The day ended quickly and we needed to clean up fast!

Long day

Today is just a regular day, with a schedule change for PSSA. We had specials right after our morning meeting at 9:35, and when we came back, we only had 10 minutes until lunchtime. After lunch, we did our 3 rounds of Daily 5 before it was time for snack and pit. We had one student arrive late today. Yesterday he was out of school because he had broken his clavicle and he came in in a sling. He also got a haircut. When he arrived, my CT explained what had happened, and that we need to be careful not to bump into him. A lot of students were surprised because they noticed his haircut and not his sling.

The day was kind of a hard one. Our schedule has been very crazy with PSSA and we had a long afternoon in the classroom today. By the end of the day, the class was pretty restless. I have been trying out some new strategies to deal with this, but it is something I really want to work on more. I also feel like when I have my own classroom with my own rules and procedures it will be a little better because I can set up my own rules. I also get the feeling they don’t consider me as a full teacher…they know I’m a student teacher. I’ve even had one student say that to me – but you’re still a student too. That drives me crazy.

I met with the principal after school today to talk about the lesson he observed yesterday. The meeting went well and he offered some great advice and suggestion while he also explained what he liked about my lesson. He liked seeing my interactions with kids and he was impressed with my lesson planning. He gave me some suggestions on how to engage everyone fully and how to redirect if a discussion veers off topic. Overall, it was a tough day, but productive. I am hoping to start the day off well tomorrow with a good morning meeting using a new greeting I found.

Principal Observation

Today was pretty crazy. The kids are wired for some reason. We also have a weird schedule because of PSSAs. We had lunch really early – 11:00. The morning went by quickly because we had morning meeting and only 2 rounds of Daily 5 before it was time for recess and then lunch. After lunch, we did our last round of Daily 5 before we moved on to writing.

The principal came in to observe my writing lesson. It wasn’t bad, but I wish it had gone a little more smoothly. The class was a little bit chatty but they were all pretty much on task and working well. I needed to focus more on writing conventions and somehow having the ability to get them to do free writing some more. The principal told me he thought it went well and he’ll look forward to reading my reflection, which is on a form I need to fill out and send to him. I’m interested to hear what he has to say, though I’m nervous about it too. It is nice to be done with observations at least.

After the writing lesson, we had pit, so that was nice to get a little breather after the observation. And right after pit, we had snack and music and recess, so we had another pretty nice break before math and dismissal. The weird schedule made the day seem to go really quickly.

Last Friday

Today was a half day for students and a full day for teachers. We attended a workshop this afternoon on a new click response system that works with smart boards. The day went fast and the workshop was interesting, and the Smartboard click response systems are great – they allow quick polls or assessments mid-lesson, by having students type in responses on individual clickers. It reminds me of the “Ask the audience” questions of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. I hope to try them sometime soon.

After our workshop, my CT and I just did some planning for next week. The principal is observing me on Monday, so I wanted to be all set for that. It was a great first week teaching and I’m looking forward to next week – especially after the observation is over ☺

Better Wednesday

My CT was out today and we had a sub. He was a student teacher here last fall. It was interesting talking to him about his experience student teaching in 3rd grade. The kids responded well to him. I was a little worried, but the kids knew him because he was their sub in library yesterday, so at least it was a familiar face.

My observation in the morning went well. My supervisor came in and sat back at my desk while I was doing guided reading and Daily 5 mini lessons. He didn’t come up front with me to hear guided reading, he was more interested in watching the rest of the class do their individual work, so I needed to be sure to keep a close eye on the entire class while I worked with the guided reading groups. They were doing a good job and were pretty much on task the entire time. I needed to give a few time outs and reminders, but that also showed that I was watching them – both to my supervisor and the class.

The afternoon was pretty good too. We got through writing pretty easily. I was excited about doing a Fancy Nancy activity with the class. We read a book about Fancy Nancy’s favorite fancy words. Then we wrote down a bunch of the words on index cards to display on a bulletin board. We talked about what each fancy word meant and then the class wrote in their journals for a few minutes, trying to use some of the fanciest words that we talked about. We had one student share and then it was time for pit.

I ran the pit lesson today – we did a Second Step lesson. Second Step is a program that the school has that goes through a bunch of social situations. Today’s lesson was about sharing and taking turns. The lessons are simple – they are basically reading from a card and doing some role play exercises. I also had a book I was thinking about reading to them, but the other teachers started talking about some things they’ve noticed related to sharing during recess that they wanted to bring up, so that took up some time. Then we previewed one of the songs that they will be learning for the 1st and 2nd grade play.

We came back for snack and math. During snack, I had some students share from their journals since so many wanted to share. After snack, we did our usual Wednesday Problem Solving. This went well and we got through both problems really quickly! Sometimes we only get through one, but today, we did both and still had about 25 minutes to spare. Still, many students wanted to share, so I had them sit in a circle and we had a few more shares. Then we played around the world for the last few minutes. I am hesitant to play that sometimes because one student gets particularly angry when she loses. I tried to give her an easy problem, but she still lost. She did a little pout, but it wasn’t too bad. She seemed ok afterwards too, so she wasn’t holding a grudge.

They went to recess and music after math and the day was over. It was definitely a much better day than yesterday. I hope tomorrow is the same way.

Crazy Day

This morning was definitely more difficult than yesterday. The class was super chatty and off task from the get go. I talked to them in the morning, once we sat down for morning meeting, reminding them of their morning jobs and what they need to do. I asked if anyone was not sure what they needed to do in the morning, and no one was. I told them I’d be watching tomorrow morning to see who is doing the right thing. My CT thinks that they are testing me to see how far they can push and that I need to stay firm. I went into the afternoon prepared to be firm in my rules.

The afternoon was all right. It was definitely a harder day than yesterday. I am trying to think about what I did differently today than yesterday that would have made a difference. I think yesterday’s math lesson was a little easier because we sorted items on the Smartboard, which usually gets them to be a little calmer for some reason. We went through poetry and handwriting pretty easily. They always seem to be pretty good during handwriting. They complete their pages neatly and they are quiet while they work.

In math, the geoboards were a great manipulative, and we used them with rubber bands. We talked about the rules for rubber bands first and luckily there was no flinging of rubber bands during the lesson, but there was a lot of excessive play with the boards. After 3 tries and 2 warnings, we stopped and worked on a worksheet at their desks instead. This worked well. We went through the worksheet together. Luckily, it was this moment when the principal came in the room, so they were all calmer and focused at that time. They did seem to understand the concept of congruency, so that was good at least. For the end of math, I had them use their extra dot paper, which we were using for congruency, to play a square making partner game. This worked well to fill about 7 minutes I had left until they went to recess.

Tomorrow, my CT is out and I am being observed, so I hope they are better behaved.

First Full Day!

This morning went very well! This week I am teaching everything and my CT really stepped back and let me handle everything. Morning meeting was a little rough and I gave a bunch of time outs, but the group seemed to settle down a lot and during Daily 5, everything went smoothly. We started a March craft – drawing a rainbow with a clover and pot of gold on each end. They are looking very cute. We didn’t have a ton of time to finish them, but I will try to squeeze this in asap. Daily 5 went very well. I felt better about keeping an eye on the class while I was working with the guided reading groups.
The afternoon was pretty fun too! I felt really calm and it seemed to flow well. My CT’s notes were helpful and she also told me that I seem to be doing a great job. We did a fun writing project where they had to think about what they would do if they were invisible. We did that and after quick mad minute and then it was time for pit. Pit was nice because I wasn’t running it, so I was just watching the kids and making sure they were focused. Later, in math, we did a fun symmetry project. I introduced the concept of symmetry and we talked about how we would fold a shape in half to check to see if it is symmetrical. I had cut out symmetrical pictures in magazines and pasted them to papers. I had them pic a picture and they had to go back to their desks and color in the other half. They came out pretty good! I am going to laminate them and make them into a class book. When they finished, I let them finish up their pot of gold crafts, so now everyone is done. After that, they could read. When everyone was done, I collected the symmetry papers and then I had them all come up to the floor. We did a fast recap of what symmetry means using a little Smartboard game I found. Then it was time to pack up and get ready for recess and gym. It felt good to get a complete day from start to finish under my belt and I am pretty excited to do it again tomorrow!

Last Friday

I felt really good about last Friday. I didn’t have much time to reflect after the day because I was heading out of town for the weekend, but I was glad to end the week on a good note. I am pretty well-planned and well prepared for next week, and some for the week after as well. The day seemed to flow well and I felt like the timing and pacing of everything worked out. We did a lot of fun activities. The superintendent even stopped by quickly and I got to say hello and introduce myself.

Loud Thursday

I am tired today. I taught pretty much all day again and it went well. The class was chatty from the get go, so we were all having trouble getting them to focus. The morning lessons were probably the best, but all of them went pretty well. By the end of the day they had started getting really crazy, but I felt calmer and ready to deal with it. I gave a bunch of time outs and each time I did, they would shape up and pay a little more attention until it broke down again. During math, I had set up to play a few probability games with different math stations around the room, but the class was getting too crazy. I pulled everyone back and told them that we can’t handle playing games today and we’d just sit up front and do the lesson regularly. We played a Smartboard game and I had them stand up and sit down for different answers to try to get them moving in a more controlled manner. I told them I was really sad that we weren’t going to get to play the games and that maybe if everyone is shaped up throughout the rest of the lesson we could play. I am planning on playing the game tomorrow instead, since we originally scheduled two days to teach probability anyway. Hopefully we can play the game because I think it would be fun. It’ll give me a way to start the lesson tomorrow – telling them that I hope we can play our game today and that they need to remember their self controls.

In the afternoon, instead of going to computers, we visited our buddy class – a 4th grade class out in the trailers. Each 4th grader had a 1st grade buddy. They did buddy reading. I was amazed how different it can be in the trailers. I remember being out in the trailers myself and how much I loved those classrooms. I still like them now. The class got very loud, but it was ok because there weren’t other classes in the same room or next door that would be disturbed. I think I like closed classrooms better than open. In a closed classroom, I wouldn’t want to be loud all the time, but when we do activities, it would be fun to not have to be as incredibly conscious of the noise level. The only problem was, after the buddy read, walking back to the classroom, out class was crazy. They were running and yelling when we went outside to walk back. My CT spoke to them when we got back in the building and we didn’t play silent ball like we usually do at the end of the day because they were acting too crazy.

Short Blog

I felt like the day today went very well. I went through the whole day with no real issues at all. I taught everything except for one mini lesson in the morning, and I feel like I am prepared for teaching the next two weeks in full. I planned out my lessons for next week and I am excited for a lot of them, especially some of the writing lessons. Towards the end of the day, one student in the class kept coming up to me during math to talk about something unrelated. I explained to him that he needed to save his story for after the lesson but I can’t talk to him during a lesson. After the lesson was over and they were packing up I went over to him to tell him he could talk to me now, and he got very upset and started to cry, saying no one ever listens to him. I explained to him again that I will listen to him, but I can’t do that while I’m teaching, and he needs to not get up and start talking in the middle of a lesson. My CT said I did the right thing and that he needs to learn that he can’t do that. We are going to try to think of some strategies to help boost his confidence a little though, because he has started to do things like this often over the past few weeks.

All Day Tuesday

I taught for a full day today. We started out with morning meeting, which ran pretty well. My CT was out of the room but I had another teacher with me who helped me run the meeting. I did a greeting where they needed to greet each other by last names (Mr. or Miss ____ ). A lot of them didn’t know each other’s last names, so they had to ask each other. It was ok, but we may practice that again. The activity I had them do was to get up and march in place, jog in place, swim, dance, etc. Then I would tell them to freeze and write a spelling word in the air. This was pretty fun. Then I had them take a few laps around the room and come back to their spots. I did a few mini lessons with the class on main characters. We talked about rays and a girl who went to a pet shop. We used clues from short stories to answer questions about what they learned. I met with green and yellow guided reading groups today. The green group was a little less squirmy and they enjoyed the new book I chose for them about two dogs. For my second mini lesson, I read a story called “If Dinosaurs Come Back” which they really seemed to enjoy. We will be doing some more activities with this book later in the week too.
I thought the afternoon went pretty well. I did poetry, handwriting, making meaning, and math. Poetry, handwriting, and making meaning were great. I was really impressed with the class during making meaning because they really enjoyed the book we read. It was about a boy who helped out at his father’s pizza shop. Then his father expanded the restaurant and hired more people. He couldn’t help out in the new restaurant and was always in the way. It seemed like a lot of kids could relate to feeling in the way.

In math today, we covered thirds and we did a “fraction person” activity that told the students to color in a blank person a certain way, according to the fractions. It said eyes ½ blue and ½ green, so one eye needed to be blue and one needed to be green, etc. We did it all together, one step at a time, in a circle. They started off doing really well, but when it got to doing fifths toward the end, they got confused. I modeled it for them and showed one that was done right, but it got a little confusing. Also, their crayons were mixed up and some kids didn’t have the right colors. This created a lot of chatter about sharing crayons and who had which colors. We finally got through it and I had them all turn in their papers. They put everything away and then I was going to have them sit quietly at their desks but I forgot a “mystery reader” was coming, so my CT had them all come back to the floor. Unfortunately, the “mystery reader” (a parent) didn’t show up, so my CT read them a book instead while I reviewed the homework with some students who were absent yesterday. I am really liking the “Making Meaning” lessons we do with reading comprehension. They are some of my favorites. The books are really fun and the kids really seem to get into the stories. I am looking forward to picking up writing lessons tomorrow.

Another Monday

This morning was interesting because I taught all morning, except for one mini lesson. I also pulled two new guided reading groups. I met with red and orange groups today, and tomorrow I will meet with yellow and green. Blue is the only group I haven’t taken over yet. I also did a mini lesson on comprehension and a mini lesson on the –y chunk of the week. –y is a difficult chunk to me because it’s not exactly a chunk of letters. The idea was for students to get words like “cry” and “sky” and “fly” but they also thought of words that end in y like “Sunday” and “dirty.” I clarified with my CT beforehand that she wanted just words that end in y and sound like “eye” at the end, but it was hard to explain without them coming up with other sounds. For my comprehension lesson, the Smartboard went crazy on me and adobe was “auto scrolling” through my whole document. The kids were in awe of this and I had to get it to stop. By the time I got it to stop, it was at the end of my document, so I needed to scroll back to up to the beginning to get to the page we are on. The class was kind of chatty while they were waiting but I thanked those students who were doing the right thing and the rest of them fell into line soon after. In guided reading, I introduced new books to each group. I introduced the book first and then went through some vocabulary. I think I will keep these same books for the next time I meet with the groups and do a little retelling and journaling activity with each of them.

This afternoon, I taught math as usual. I tried to differentiate the activities a little more by having a more difficult worksheet for those who finished early. This was good but hard to keep track of. I had a Smartboard activity running in the background for those who finished the first 2 worksheets. I’m trying to get away from doing this, but it works so well that it’s hard. Tomorrow I may have them use my CT’s fact triangle sheets games or something else new.

I sent one girl to the nurse this afternoon because she told me repeatedly that she felt like she was going to throw up. At first I thought she’s forget it but she kept complaining and she usually doesn’t complain about stuff like that so I sent her. When she came back she seemed fine and my CT seemed disappointed that she had gone to the nurse. I felt like I had done something wrong, but I was worried about her and I thought I’d rather be safe than sorry in that situation.

When the kids came in from recess, I got them in line to go to gym. We walked down to the gym in the hall pretty well, with no excessive noise or anything. My CT noticed that they haven’t been packing up as well and that they are leaving things in their chair bags and on their tables, so they need to do a better job packing up. It is something I will try to watch out for over the next few weeks.

Busy Thursday

I had my third observation today and it went ok. It was quick because my supervisor was late. I started my lesson on main ideas with a video and then we went through a quick activity on the Smartboard. Then I pulled a guided reading group. The group went well – it was my first time meeting with them – but they were pretty squirmy. I know I need to develop some strategies to keep them in their seats better while we work. It was a good little book to read through and the story spinner worked well. It is a spinner that we can use – each students spins and then answers a question about the book (setting, characters, ending, beginning, problem, etc).

This afternoon I did a word sort, making meaning (comprehension), a jeopardy game, read aloud, and fair shares in math. The word sort and making meaning and jeopardy all went very well. I had them write the word sort words in their journals today instead of having them come up to the Smartboard directly. This worked because they were all focused on something. I think the next time I do it, I will either have a pre-made worksheet for them to fill out, or I will have us all write it in our journals together, all at the same time. Some students fell behind and they were worried that they weren’t keeping up.

I had them put their journals back and take a lap around the room to come back for making meaning. I put them into partners and we first talked about how they talk when they talk to partners. They showed me how they sit and how they whisper to partners. We then read through the book again and I asked them a few questions to talk to their partners about. They did very well with that too.

Jeopardy worked really well today. I separated the class into 4 teams, and I kept the money in a “bank” up front. I was going to start them all with $500 each, but I knocked them down to $400 each when they were all talking. The group was, in general, really well-behaved, and I only had to fine two teams once or twice. At the end f the game, we counted each team’s money and I gave the money to someone on each team. I told them to try to divide it evenly among their team members. The group was good during most of the read aloud as well. The end of the read aloud and math began to get a little crazier. We talked about fair shares in math. I started our talking about the jeopardy money and how they split their prize money. I liked using that as a lead-in. We then did a few examples on the computer and they had a worksheet to complete. I let one student be “teacher” and run the Smartboard game. I didn’t realize that the game I had selected had a time limit for “free users” of the website, so after a certain amount of time, the game stopped. I had to quickly pull up an older game so they could keep going. Meanwhile, I was checking worksheets. That is hard to do because they all want to get up to the Smartboard and I can only check one at a time. Meanwhile, other students have questions and they keep coming up to me and asking their questions. It took many reminders that they need to stay in their seats, work quietly, and raise their hands for help. I called them back up to the board and they started to chat again and act very disappointed when I said the game was over. I asked them if they’d rather play that or Around the World. They got very excited about Around the World, but the game didn’t happen. They were very loud getting ready for the game, so I told them we wouldn’t be able to play. I explained to them that they needed to keep their self controls and because they weren’t able to, we couldn’t play. Instead, I had them clean up, pack up, and put their heads down on their desks. I dismissed them to recess when they were all settled down with their heads down.

After recess, the kids came in very loudly, and 3 girls came up to my CT and I in tears. Apparently one boy had punched and kicked them. We called all of them, along with the boy, up to talk. He apologized to them and they shook hands and agreed to be friends. My CT wrote a note home to the boy’s parents. He didn’t seem to have done it meanly, and he was upset that he hurt them. It sounded like a game that got out of control. I felt a little bad for him, as well as for the girls, but I think it worked out ok.

Finally, we had an uneventful computers class before dismissal. Overall, it was a good Thursday, and I felt good after teaching a pretty full day.

Yesterday's mini-blog

Morning meeting went well. I made up a greeting today where they just shake hands and tell each other how many loose teeth they have. I did that because I have another greeting that I like that I want to save for tomorrow morning. For our activity, I had them decorate CDs that I will make into tops for the class. Now I just need to hot glue marbles and handles to them all. Because they had been sitting a while for morning meeting, I had them get up and jump around a few times before sitting back down to focus on coloring. They enjoyed using permanent markers on the CDs. We gave them each a color and they used that for about a minute, then they passed it to the left and used another color for another minute, then they did one more pass, so everyone got 3 colors.

I didn’t get to reflect much on my afternoon because it went by so quickly. I taught my math lesson and did my read aloud. I spent a lot of time at night looking up quick energizers and activities that I can do for when the class starts to get antsy. I hope to use a lot of these ideas soon.

Tuesday (that feels like a Monday)

This morning went really quickly. I was prepared to do a new greeting, but my CT asked me to do the nametag greeting where we put their nametags in the middle of the circle and one person at a time picks a nametag and greets that person. We had a lot of shares because two students just came home from vacations in Aruba and Disney World. They both wrote vacation journals. We decided to let them each share a page of their journal every day of the week. We did our morning chart and a quick activity where one person went in the middle, blindfolded, and had to try to guess the object in their hands. It worked pretty well because we had an activity to do with our buddy class – a 4th grade class that they meet with a few times throughout the year. Today we were decorating candy filled bags for March Madness. After the activity, we had about a half hour for Daily 5. I did Words of the Week, and then we were going to choose one round, but we decided to do a mad minute. They are getting better at mad minutes – this was 4 minutes, with 10 subtraction problems, using larger numbers. They are getting harder, which is why we cut it from 30 problems back down to ten.

After lunch, I taught the whole afternoon. We did poetry first. They class was acting a little silly. The poetry and handwriting lessons went smoothly. I started giving some more time outs when they were getting unruly. My CT was glad I did that. For poetry, they pretty much know what to do already, so it was simple to run through. For handwriting, I had students come up and write the words on the Smartboard since we had some time. After handwriting, the making meaning lesson went really quickly. The students got into partners and I read the story to them, stopping at a few points to ask them to talk with their partners about something in the book. It worked well. My CT suggested that I review with them, next time, how they should sit with a partner (EEKK – Elbow, Elbow, Knee, Knee) and do a practice question to remind them how we use whisper voices and then look back up front. Also, the signal is a hand up to tell them to stop talking. I will use these tricks next time.

Math today started out well. My first game for ordinal numbers didn’t work, so I brought up a new one. My CT was glad I had a back-up idea…I was too. While it was loading, I put four markers on the ground and had them put them in order however I said (red is third, blue is forth, black is first, green is second, etc). After the car racing game, we did a few different types of review problems for the math test. They were not paying much attention, so I gave a bunch more time outs to the students who were instigating and had to stop a few times to make sure they were paying attention. My CT advised me to do a mini stretch or something when they start getting antsy like that. I will remember that for next time. We then had them go back to their desks to start the math test. We got through a little over half of it before we ran out of time. I collected all their tests and we will finish it tomorrow after our problem solving lesson.

Tired

Morning meeting was easy today because we did it like we do on Fridays – choice greeting and activity. The class chose the maraca greeting where we spin the maraca and greet whoever it points to. We started our shares, but there was a surprise fire drill. I was proud because the principal selected our class as a model class because we walked out so quietly. He had us go in first so the whole school could see. I made sure to praise them for that complement from the principal when we came back inside. We got right back to our shares and chart. We had to do a quick activity and they chose “Yes No.” My CT and I took turns coming up with Yes or No questions to ask. There is a laminates Yes and a laminated No that we put on the floor. They move to either side to answer our questions. It is a simple game, but a lot of fun, and it’s interesting to learn about the class.

We did Daily 5 and during the first round I sat with two students who missed our last math test and we did that. They both did very well, but needed a few reminders about how to do some problems. I wasn’t surprised because the test was on things from about a month ago. We also did their spelling test today too and they all did very well. They are great at practicing their weekly word lists.

After lunch, I had them sir on the floor to play a word jeopardy game. It used a variety of “A” sounds like –ay, ai, a-e, etc. They had sheets with a word bank and I split the class into two teams. I think it would have worked better if I split the class into 3 or 4 teams instead. The teams were big and it got a little talkative – until I started fining them for talking. When teams got a question right, they would get play money. When I heard too much talking, I would take a hundred dollar bill from the team. That worked really well. The word sort went well too. We did a sounds again, and I had them, one at a time, come up to the board to move words into the correct column (long a, short a or oddball). My CT suggested that next time I have them write the words down in their word work journals or on a whiteboard. I didn’t have time this time, but I may do that next week to switch it up.

We had a quick video in pit for President’s Day and then we had snack. I picked a book they already read in library, but they enjoyed it anyway, and we did one madlib. Then it was time for their science test. We did a quick review and I even told them some of the questions beforehand. We talked about what the answers could be. I then gave out the test and I went through each question with them. I had a student read the question, then I repeated it and clarified it. I told them how to respond and to put their pencils down and eyes on me when they finished so I knew when to go on to the next question. I graded them after school and found that most of them did vey well. The hardest question seemed to be “name as many different ways things can move as you can think of.” I was surprised because that seemed to be the easiest to me. I guess because that is so open-ended, it was more difficult. I tried to give them as many hints as I could without giving it away. We had gone over the same question in pit yesterday. I think only 3 people got all 3 words we talked about.

After I collected their tests, I told them to come up front for math. I had a basic plan, but I don’t think my plan was detailed enough. I had the idea to do a game they had already done with cups and counters, using the worksheet we had, but it didn’t work out very well. I paired them up, but we had an issue when one student didn’t want to be with the partner she was put with. I told her they needed to work together, but she would keep moving away from him. I finally got them to sit together, but she wouldn’t play the game. Meanwhile, the rest of the class was laying with the counters and talking loudly and it took so much time just to get set up, that we barely even got into the lesson. I was disappointed with myself that I couldn’t get it under control enough to play the game. I know they already know how to do this because it was something they did during my first or second week there, so maybe they were bored because it wasn’t challenging enough too. When I asked them for answers, they all knew the answers right away. So, at least I know they understand the concept, but it was disappointing to not end my teaching today on a good note. Students are off tomorrow for an In-Service day, so hopefully, on Tuesday I’ll be well-prepared to come back and make all of my lessons work.

Guest Teacher

My CT was in this morning before school started so I saw her along with the sub that is working with us today. My CT left right before the kids came in. I ran morning meeting again, which went ok. We played the place value game, and still, despite shuffling the cards, the answers went almost around the circle. It skipped around a little more, but not enough to keep them from predicting who would be next. It still worked out ok. I hen had them take two laps around the room and come back to their spots so the guest teacher could start Daily 5. Instead of choosing Daily 5 centers, we did read to self, then read to buddy, then word work. I talked to one student a little bit because he said he couldn’t concentrate. I asked him why and he said he couldn’t stop thinking about music. I asked him if a song was stuck in his head. He said yes – it was a Doors song “Break on through to the other side.” I told him that I noticed he has good taste in music and I sang some of the song to him. I told him he needed to read to himself, even though sometimes it’s hard with a song stuck in your head. I told him he could have the song playing in the background in his mind as he reads. He seemed to like that idea and he started reading.

After Daily 5, we did a quick activity with them finding words in their Quickword books – similar to a dictionary, to spell them correctly. They got about halfway through it before lunch/recess. After lunch, the sub worked with them for writing. They had to write, “On Valentine’s Day I enjoyed…” and then write a few sentences about the things they enjoyed on Valentine’s Day. Most of them wrote a lot of wonderful sentences. A few students needed some extra help and could barely come up with one or two. We had a few of them share their sentences as well before pit. At pit, we did a jeopardy review game on the Balance and Motion unit. The game went well and we asked a lot of questions that will be on the test. We will do the test tomorrow and then that unit is officially over. Then I’ll pick up the “Making Meaning” portion of the day, which we do when we don’t have pit. It is a reading comprehension program. I read over the next lesson and it looks like a good one. They work in partners to talk about the story together and discuss what happened, retell it, and think about how the characters feel.

Math today was fine. We did problem solving, so it was an easy lesson. They weren’t paying much attention though, even though they knew how to do it with no problem. We played the same game as yesterday after math, counting by tens. Everyone picked 10 to start with, so when we do 5’s, I will have them pick random numbers from a hat or something so that they all start at harder numbers.

After math, we just took them to music and after that it was time for dismissal. It was a pretty good day overall.

Chatty Tuesday

Morning meeting went well again today. There were no shares, so it went quickly. I was a little bit concerned that there haven’t been many shares these past few days. I hope we have some tomorrow. I was surprised to learn it isn’t required to have at least 1 or 2 a day. Sometimes it seems like there are many, but sometimes it seems like there are very few. My activity was called “chief” or “copycat” where one student hides his/her eyes and then another is selected as the leader. The leader does motions and then the hider comes out and tries to guess who the leader is based on who is the first one to change movements. It worked well, but they got chatty and we stopped the game a little short to give them two laps around the room so they could settle down.

I ran my first guided reading group today with yellow group. It was interesting and fun to work with a small group. We read through the vocabulary words and went over the few that they didn’t know. Then we read through chapter 1 together and we went through the first two comprehension questions. We also started putting the vocab words in alphabetical order, which was something they haven’t really done much of before. I taught them how to look at the second and third letters of words if there is more than one word on the list with the same beginning letter. We then went into the first chapter and read it out loud. Then I asked them the comprehension questions and we talked about it. There were a lot of tangents and them talking about random things, so I think next time I do it, I will try to focus them a little better. Hopefully as we get into more chapters when more things happen, that will be a little easier. I plan to meet with them again on Thursday.

The afternoon was definitely crazy. I need to get better at being a little more stern and giving time outs when I know someone is instigating the rest of the class. I gave two time outs today but I could have even given more. My CT said that today was just one of those days all around, when the class is extremely chatty. She said she’s had classes in the past where she has felt like all she did was stop activities and send the class back and have them put their heads down for 2 minutes. She said it gives both them and you a chance to think. I probably could have used that today. I always feel the need to keep moving along and moving forward, but I need to get better at stopping, repeating steps, giving time outs, and stopping activities when it’s needed. Hopefully I will get better at that in the next month or so. When the class came in for recess, my CT had them come in and put their heads down until the library teacher arrived. It helped settle them down, at least for the time being. Library class was held in the classroom today. It was interesting to hear what they did. They did a lesson on President’s Day and read a book about the Presidents. Then they colored in pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The class was chatty for the librarian too, and my CT talked to them afterwards. She explained that the way they were behaving was not ok and that she knows they can do better. They agreed and hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. We will have a sub in tomorrow, so I’ll be interesting to see how it goes.

Valentine's Day

I ran most of the morning activities today. We did a heart greeting for Valentine’s Day and an activity with candy hearts. I gave every student a candy heart and they had to quietly walk around giving each other little peeks of their hearts. They had to be able to find friends that had the same color hearts. We ended when everyone was in a group. It was a good, quick, and quiet activity that went really well. The greeting had the students make a heart shape with their hands and greet each other by saying “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

After morning meeting, we did words of the week and chunk of the week. I used my own poem for chunk of the week (-and), but I am looking forward to the next chunk because we have a song for it again. I like the songs better than the poems because using poems make it seem too similar to the weekly poetry lessons.

We went to lunch after 3 rounds of Daily 5 activities. I sat in on my CT’s guided reading groups again and I think I will pull yellow group for the first time tomorrow to start our Magic Treehouse book. After lunch we did a quick writing activity where the kids wrote about their favorite things about Valentine’s Day, people they love, things they love, etc. We stapled them into mini books that they could take home.

Finally, it was time for the Valentine’s Day festivities. We started with snack and a read-aloud book about Valentine’s Day. Then, one at a time, students were called to get their boxes and valentines. One table at a time gave out their cards. When that was finished, we had them pack up and clean up so we could go to another classroom where the grade was having their ice cream, party. We were very close to running out of ice cream, but we made it, grabbing a few extra ice cream cups from the cafeteria. We gave them choices of toppings, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream. They watched Charlie Brown’s Valentine’s Day and enjoyed their ice cream. Luckily, after that was recess and gym and then dismissal. That gave them time to burn off the extra energy from the party before they went home. Overall, it was a fun day and the class was better than expected.

Crazy Socks and Candy Hearts

It’s crazy sock day! I ran morning meeting today and I guessed correctly that we’d be doing the shoe greeting so everyone could see everyone’s crazy socks. Everyone puts one shoe in the middle of the circle and one at a time, someone picks a shoe and greets that person. They also get to choose their activity on Friday, so we played Magic Squares. That is my favorite activity so far too. The teacher comes up with a pattern of “stepping stones” using sample size carpet squares. Going around the circle, each student takes a turn trying to figure out the pattern of where to step. When they hit a wrong square, the teacher rings a bell and the next person tries.

During Daily 5 today, my CT didn’t pull any guided reading groups. Instead, for the mini lessons, we had the students present their power points. We made sure they were all fixed up and then we emailed them to their parents after they were presented. We’ve already gotten some great parent replies.

My CT was out for the afternoon, so I worked with a substitute teacher. I taught all afternoon. I had lots of reminders on my desk to make sure one girl was packed up to leave early at 1, to share one more power point that we didn’t get to, to share parent emails privately with the students who got replies, and the try to get students who didn’t guess the candy heart jar to put in their guesses. I got everything done except remind the students whose parents sent emails. All of my lessons went well except at the very very end of the day. I had the class graphing candy hearts in math and they got a little out of hand. I was embarrassed when another teacher from a neighboring classroom came over and asked us to keep it down. The sub I was with is not yet certified; she has an emergency certification from the state, but will be pursuing her teaching certification in the coming year. I felt more experienced than her. She didn’t do a whole lot to help me manage the class, so I felt really on my own. That plus me giving them candy hearts really made them crazy. At the very end I told them that I was really sad that they couldn’t keep their self control and that I don’t think I’ll be bringing in any more candy for future math games. The worst was when we played around the world right after math. One student made it all the way around the world and when he made it he yelled “I MADE IT ALL THE WAY AROUND THE WORLD!” Everyone erupted laughing at the outburst. That was when the other teacher came by to ask us to quiet down. The day ended quickly and I was exhausted. I’m very glad it’s the weekend.

T-H-U-R-S-D-A-Y Thursday!

I ran morning meeting again today along with a 6th grade peer mediator who did a greeting and activity on self-esteem. We did morning meeting a little out of order this morning, starting with shares, then doing the greeting and activity, then doing chart. We did that because the peer mediator came a little bit late to our classroom. I observed by CT doing guided reading groups today too. I will pick up the highest level next week. I watched a lower level one too and then I helped a parent volunteer by copying pages for books the class is making at the “work on writing” center. My CT was talking to the parent for a little bit while the students watched a video on beginning-middle-end. After the video, I talked to them a little about it as my CT finished up. The whole class was really well-behaved this morning, and the boy from yesterday who came in with his mom seemed much happier than he was yesterday but also much more behaved.

After lunch, my CT took time to do her lessons because she will be out tomorrow afternoon. I will do my planned lessons tomorrow with the sub. Pit was fun and I’m glad I only have one more lesson to do in this unit besides the review. The class really enjoyed the rolling wheels lesson, and we had a video of Bill Nye the Science Guy doing motion experiments that they loved. We used it to finish off the lesson, but didn’t finish it. That’s good because we can continue it if we run short another time. The class had fun during math today using calculators to count by 2’s 5’s and 10’s. I demonstrated it on the Smartboard using online-calculator.com. It was hard to find a calculator that did it the right way. Some don’t keep counting if you just keep hitting the equal button. Each of the students needed some help once they got a calculator of their own to use. They still need more practice but seem to be getting it much better now.

The end of the day went quickly again because they had indoor recess and computers. They mostly finished their power points so that is exciting, and many will present them tomorrow. My CT will also email them to parents. They are all really proud of their presentations.

The day ended when one of the school buses broke down and all the kids came back into the building. We did a lot of calling parents who were waiting at the bus stops to let them know that another bus was on the way. Luckily the new bus came pretty quickly and we were out of there about 20 minutes later than usual. It was interesting to see how the school handled it. The principal came in and we had the whole bus of kids sit in the pit. They asked for a cell phone number for moms that would be waiting at the bus stops so they could let everyone know that a new bus was coming and the kids would be home soon. The principal encouraged parents not to come pick up their kids to avoid confusion.

First Wednesday in a While

I ran morning meeting this morning and it went pretty well. Our greeting was the “friendship claw” which is a gesture I learned at an underground comedy show in Brooklyn. The only problem I had was during the activity. We played Wonderball, and the ball goes around the circle and whoever it lands on it out. The ball landed on one student who does have some behavior and anger issues, and she got very angry and upset and would not move out of the circle. I told her to take a time out but she wouldn’t budge. My CT needed to take her aside and talk to her. She basically asked her how she could have handled that better and that she can’t act like that in school. The rest of the game went very well, and we had a winner. I had the class do a cheer for her – there is a list of cheers that they do and I had her pick her favorite for the class to give her.

I did my math lesson this afternoon and the problem solving lesson went pretty well. The problems are pretty easy for them to solve. After problem solving, we had some time, so I had them get into a circle and play “Sparkle.” We counted by 2’s and had the people who said 16 and 24 sit down. The afternoon wiggles were certainly hitting them hard. I had to wait for them to quiet down a few times, so we didn’t have enough time to get out calculators like I wanted to show them how to check their work on their skip counting worksheets. We will work on that tomorrow though.

I seems like next week I will pick up my first guided reading group – the highest reading level. My CT gave me a great unit on a Magic Treehouse chapter book that I think I will use with them.

A parent came in in the afternoon with her son who is in our class. He left early, but he told him mom on the way out that he got two time outs. His mom asked why and he said he didn’t know. They came back to ask my CT and I. We explained what he was doing and came up with a plan to send home a sheet every day to celebrate the times he does not get time outs and to explain why and time outs were given. I felt a little pressure trying to explain to the parent why I gave her son a time out, but I felt it was justified at the time. He was being silly and misbehaving but nothing specific. Anyway, that wasn’t too bad and we all agreed that that behavior plan should work well. It’ll be interesting to see if his behavior is any better starting tomorrow.

Crazy Tuesday

I was really looking forward to morning meeting this morning because it was my first time leading it. Unfortunately, 6th graders from the Environmental group came to our class to do a morning meeting activity. So, my morning meeting duties got pushed to tomorrow. I did, at least, get to run the daily chart reading and shares. Tomorrow I will do the greeting and activity that I had planned and I will also run the meeting on Thursday and possibly Friday as well.
My CT told me that this Friday she will also be taking half a personal day because she needs to go with her daughter to an appointment. I will be teaching all afternoon, so it won’t matter much. It should be interesting to see how that goes though. I think I will feel more comfortable being more on my own, but we’ll see.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly. I did handwriting, poetry, science in pit, and math. Handwriting went very well. Poetry was a little harder because I thought I was running short on time, though I wasn’t. We squeezed poetry in, but the class started getting a little rowdy. Our TA was a sub today so he had also given the conflicting instructions to what I had given them. I told the class to freeze and repeated my directions, then I told them if they had already done it the other way, that is ok too. Pit wasn’t bad today either – I ran it myself. It was difficult getting volunteers to get the zoomers working well – I had to practice them for days just to figure them out, so they weren’t the best tools to be using, but a few kids got the hang of it after a few tries. They seemed excited to try them back in their classrooms. I set up a little science center in my classroom with all of the materials from our pit experiments so that we can work on them when there is spare time. They are especially useful during indoor recess.

The first grade teachers met today during specials to plan for the next few weeks. We planned our Valentines Day party for Monday as well. It looks like after our Balance and Motion unit, the other student teacher and I will trade off with the other teachers like they usually do for pit lessons, and we will go back to having pit every other day instead of every day.

Monday Again

This morning, I arrived early to observe the peer mediator session before school. They introduced an activity for morning meeting where the mediators will go into classrooms and give students a paper heart. They will read a story where a child’s self esteem gets knocked down. Each time something happens to hurt the student in the story, the class crinkles their heart. At the end, all of the crinkles represent something that hurt their self esteem. While I was listening to that, I helped the other student teacher set up for our pit lesson this afternoon on tops. We got doodle tops and tops made out of straws to show the students. We also found a video on YouTube to introduce the tops lesson.

I taught the words of the week and chunk of the week this morning too. The words of the week lesson went very well. I am getting used to doing that. The chunk of the week was a little more difficult because the chunk was “-ing.” Many of the students wanted to use verbs like “running,” “jumping,” “swimming,” etc. But the chunk was really for words that had –ing as a part of the word, not as an ending (like ring, thing, swing, spring, etc.). That was probably something I should have clarified beforehand.

After lunch, I did the science and math lessons. In science today, I co-taught with the other student teacher in pit. We started the Motion part of the Balance and Motion unit. The subject was tops. We showed a video about spinning tops that the class really enjoyed. They got a little too excited though, and we needed to get them back on task after the video ended. There wasn’t a whole lot to this particular lesson, so we had to stretch out the material a bit. Most of the lesson consists of having a class make tops of their own, but with a large group of 62, we couldn’t do that in that time period. Instead, the classes will have opportunities to make tops later in their own classrooms. We used a document camera on the floor to show the tops spinning on the ground. That worked really well because everyone could see.

I wasn’t 100% sure what to do for math today, so I was really surprised my lesson went so well. I had a few Smartboard games and a cool interactive hundred chart to use to show patterns of numbers, and a basic plan, but it didn’t seem quite long enough. We counted by tens first, then fives. Then we did a worksheet together. The class was getting antsy so I told them I had another worksheet or a game and we could do the game if they were well behaved and quiet. If not, I said we’d have to go back to our desks to work on the worksheet. That helped them settle down a lot and we played a Smartboard game using the hundreds board. When that was over, I still had a chunk of time to fill. On the spot, I decided to give each table one blank hundreds chart. We started with the captain and we had them quietly pass the paper around, each student adding the next number. I told them that when their table finished, they needed to turn the paper over and put their heads down so I would know they were done. Table 1 finished first. I used the game to explain to the class my new incentive board. Since we had filled up our hundreds board, I designed a new board with hearts that had each students’ name on it. I explained that they could stamp their hearts instead of signing the hundreds board. When they get 5 stamps, they’ll get to pick from the surprise box. Then they get 10, they can pick from the rewards chart. The winning table got to be the first four to stamp their hearts.

Thursday's Post

posting on Friday morning because I didn't get a chance to get on here last night:


Well we had another snow day yesterday. I am all planned up through the end of next week, so I finally took a day to (mostly) relax. I fixed up a few lesson plans and did some work on the Drexel discussion boards, which is sometimes tough to fit in, but besides that, I exercised and cooked and tried to enjoy the day off.

The morning went by quickly and I didn’t have any lessons to do. The afternoon was pretty crazy though and I did a lot. It was definitely tiring. I went too long on my handwriting lesson. It was a new type of handwriting lesson, so I hadn’t tried it before. Instead of writing letters, they were writing words. I had them bring white boards to the front and practice writing. Then I had volunteers come up to write the words. Then they went back to their desks to complete the worksheets. I realized that this took too much time, and they did get plenty of chances to practice on their worksheets, so next time, I think I will just demonstrate the words on the white board or Smartboard and then have them go back to do their worksheets. That should speed it up. Because that lesson went too long, I have a mini word work lesson that I need to squeeze in tomorrow. I think I will try to do that after math tomorrow, since the math lesson tomorrow is a pretty quick one.

My science lesson in pit was ok today. It was my first time doing it alone. It was a little difficult to get 62 kids under control, but the other teachers helped when I needed it. I think I’ll get better at it, but 62 first graders are difficult to manage. They did seem to really like the lesson, which involved using wire and clothespins to balance a pencil on its point on top of a popsicle stick. The kids were definitely excited to try it and amazed to see the pencil balancing. I think the next few lessons will be even more exciting. Vanessa teaches on tomorrow, so at least I’ll get a little break while we go to pit.

Computers was pretty cool, and the class had fun putting together more of their power point presentations.

No-Snow Tuesday

I’m glad today isn’t a snow day! It seemed to be heading in that direction based on the weather forecast, but I woke up this morning to find that it’s not so bad out yet and school is going on as scheduled, for once. This morning I met with the other student teacher to set up our lesson in pit again. We realized it’s a shame the way they do these lessons in such a large group. The experiments are shown to the whole group with a few volunteers. Then, they might try it in class, but most of the time, the classes never get to it. It almost defeats the purpose of the learning by doing that these lessons are built around.

The students learned about nouns today in their mini-lessons. They seemed to pick up on them faster than adjectives, and I still feel that it would have been easier to teach adjectives after nouns, but this is working out ok. There was a great activity on the Smartboard that gave a list of words and they needed to drag them into either a “nouns” or “not nouns” bin. The rest of the students gave a “thumbs up” if they thought it was a noun, and a “thumbs down” if they thought the word was not a noun. A new activity was also added to the “work on writing” center, which the students seem to enjoy. There are mini pre-made books and the students can write their own story in them, and illustrate the book as well. As they finish, they can put them in a bin to share with the class. This addition made a lot of students choose to work on writing, and we had 2 students share their books with the class. We noticed that the books, only 3 pages long (plus a cover) were probably too short for them, so we are going to run off pages and give them the ability to add more pages if they need to.

Pit went pretty well today. It was our second time co-teaching and it worked out even better, probably because the experiment we did was a little more complex. It involved balancing a triangle and an arch on a popsicle stick. We had a bunch of volunteers come up and try it, and I really felt like the students were getting the concept of counterweights and balance points. We used a scanned image of a worksheet with different scenarios on it to try out. It worked well to have the students give either thumbs up or thumbs down to let us know if they thought the shapes would balance. That works really well with such a large group of kids.

Math, on the other hand, was crazy. I was teaching trading ten ones to make a ten, and it was definitely a tough concept. The other student teacher taught the same lesson to her class today too and had the same issues, so that did make me feel a little bit better. I asked my CT if there was a better way to explain it and she basically told me that it really is a hard concept and that I explained it well, but we just need to review it more and keep reinforcing it and going over it. Because it was a tough concept, I felt that I was losing them a lot of the time. At the end, we played “around the world” with addition flash cards. They really enjoyed the game, but were getting silly. I told them a few times that it didn’t seem like they were shaped up enough to play. I gave quite a few time outs as well. It would work for a second every time, but then it dissolved again. My CT told me not to be afraid to just stop the game and have them sit down with their heads down at their desks if they can’t control themselves. I may need to use that strategy sometime.

The end of the day went quickly. My CT gave me her midterm evaluation of me that she is sending to my school and I was happy with what she wrote. I feel like I’m really learning a lot, so much more than I ever could have learned in regular classes about teaching.

Lots of Lessons!

Morning: We start our Balance and Motion unit today in pit. I met with the other student teacher, who I am working on this with, and we briefly went over our lesson this morning. It seems like we are pretty much ready to go. We don’t have enough supplies for every class, but we will be demonstrating the experiments in the pit and then giving each classroom a few supplies so that students can try them out back in their classrooms later in the day.

I quickly taught the words of the week and chunk of the week this morning. Those lessons are fast and pretty easy. I am getting used to them. They’re a little repetitive, but the students know exactly what to do and what they will be doing, so it flows well. It’s hard sometimes to tell a student they’re wrong when they pick a word for “chunk of the week” that doesn’t go. For example, our chunk of the week was –ake. So, students brainstorm words that have –ake in them (bake, make, take, etc). One student said “tummy ache.” I just explained that, yes, it sounds like it should end in –ake, but it’s actually spelled differently, with “ache.”

Afternoon: The lesson in the pit went really well – it seemed to go by quickly. The principal walked in right at the beginning and that made us both a little nervous, but it was good to start that out by co-teaching. Vanessa and I worked well together and the other teachers were all there to be supportive and keep their classes in check. The first lesson in that unit doesn’t have much to it, but we took a bunch of volunteers to try the first experiment to draw it out a bit.

After pit, we had an assembly with “the balloon guy.” That was pretty insane. The balloon guy was fun and funny and the kids loved him, but they went crazy. They were screaming and yelling and jumping up with excitement at every move. He had volunteers come up and those volunteers got balloons. At one point, when the volunteers left the stage, other kids tried to grab their balloons. The principal calmed them all down. After the show. They had recess, but then they were back in time for a quick snack and math lesson. My math lesson went well despite some calling out. They were still excited and chatting about the balloons. We did a quick Smartboard lesson and worksheet on estimating. Then I had a basket filled with blocks and asked them to estimate the number of blocks in the basket. The winners got to sign the hundreds board. The hundreds board is now all filled up with names, so pretty soon we will select a winner at random to choose his or her prize. That took us right up to the end of the day, so the timing worked out perfectly.

Friday

Yesterday, the 27th was a snow day, so today (Friday) is a little messed up again. It is a two-hour delay, though I am here at the regular time along with the rest of the teachers so that we can figure out what we’re doing today and all of next week. I also met with the other student teacher I’m working with to go over our grade-wide Balance and Motion science unit. I completely forgot to bring the game to school today that I was going to play with the class during math. Luckily, one of the other first grade teachers had a great Smart Notebook file on the lesson and emailed it to me. I am using that instead now and I think it will work out just fine. My CT even gave me a fly swatter to use (the game is where students swat flies to get different problems on the Smartboard. The fly swatter is a great toy to use, as long as it works on the Smartboard. I will test that out before we start.

We have a meeting with the principal before lunch today too to go over students’ scores on the CogAT test, which they use to determine candidates for the school’s Humanities program. That should be an interesting meeting. I remember taking that test and being a candidate for the program. My parents didn’t put me in it because I was young for my grade and they didn’t want the added pressure on me. I always used to wish they did put me in Humanities though. I would have been with my friends more all throughout school (even in high school, for social studies). I remember hearing that I scored around a 118 or so on that test, though that may not be correct. I think it’s scored similarly to an IQ test. My brother got about the same score as I did, and he was in Humanities.

This afternoon went well. I did my math lesson as usual. My CT was busy with some paperwork for the students identified to go into more testing for the gifted program, so she wasn’t observing me as much. I think that made me feel a little more independent and at ease and the lesson went well. The fly swatter game worked pretty well and they had fun using the physical fly swatter to touch the flies on the Smartboard. It was a good prop. We also did a shark game where it showed number blocks with multiple choice numbers. When they got one correct, a dolphin swam across the board. When one was wrong, a shark bit off a piece of a boat. The class was curious about what would happen when the shark ate the whole boat, so at the very end, I asked a few volunteers to come up and tell me the right answer, then hit one of the wrong answers. We did that until the boat was gone. Nothing major happened – they thought there may be a picture or something underneath the boat. Then, we just ended the game, and I did a follow-up activity where someone would make a number on the board using blocks and they had to pick a volunteer to guess the number. This worked out well to close the activity, but I kept having to remind them to look at the board and try to figure out what number was being made.

After math, the day went by quickly. They had indoor recess and then we got them packed up and ready for art. It was a sad afternoon though because we got the news that one of the student’s stepbrother died earlier today, possibly of a drug overdose. Her mom was coming to get her early. She is a really sensitive girl, very young for first grade, so I am worried about how she will be. Her dad passed away when she was 3 or 4, so this is going to be rough on her. She is usually very clingy and complains of stomachaches during the day, so I can imagine that next week, if she is in school, that will be even more intense. Poor girl. I’ll be thinking of her this weekend.

Early Dismissal

It’s snowing like crazy outside and it’s not a snow day! It’s good to get the day in but it’s still going – way more than was predicted. The roads were horrible this morning, worse probably because no one expected it to be this bad. My CT was stuck in traffic and was late getting into work. I was proud of myself because as students started arriving, I found a morning work worksheet, had them do their morning jobs, and then work on the worksheet. They were pretty well behaved. The worksheet was a pretty challenging word search, so it kept them focused and occupied for a pretty long time. When the teacher arrived, they were either reading or working on their worksheet.

We only did one round of daily 5 because we kept hearing different rumors about school closing early. The official word is 12:15 now. It sounds like I may not get out until later though because we have to wait until all the buses get here and all the kids are gone. I assisted with a guided reading group today. They were just practicing the words of the week, so it was a simple lesson. I had them write each word on a white board. The kids are pretty wound up after the crazy morning, so we decided to have them do a journal response to the Hungry Caterpillar to calm them down a bit. That definitely helped.

We got in my planned math lesson for the day, which was good. It was a scripted lesson from a Problem Solving book. We went through two “Make An Organized List” problems on the Smartboard and then a third one was for homework. They seemed to catch on quickly and it was an easy lesson to do.

Dismissal was crazy because a few buses were late because of the snow. We had to wait with the students until all the buses came and got them. Luckily it wasn’t too long and then we were out of there! I used the rest of the day to plan for the rest of this week and next. The snow is a pain, but it does help with giving more planning time! Tomorrow should be interesting because my CT is out and I’ll be with a sub….

Observation Day #2

Today is another observation day. I think I have my lesson down pat and I have a good idea of how it will run. I am learning to plan for smaller details, like that the students will all do the problem first, then I will choose one volunteer to come up and show everyone on the board how they did it. I videotaped myself yesterday, and watching it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I think I may do one or two more before I have to turn it in so that I have a few choices of lessons to turn in. I noticed a few things I should have done. One student had finished her worksheet really early but I didn’t come around to check her paper until the end. I felt bad about that and I think I will let her be the “teacher” to start the game today.

The morning went smoothly today. I didn’t do any lessons in the morning, but I read with one student and tried to keep the class on task while they were mostly working on writing in Daily 5. They had some trouble getting started and picking stickers to write sticker stories. I still think that organizing the stickers would be helpful. There were some arguments about how many stickers they were allowed to take. I thought they were allowed 2 each, but one student told me that they are only supposed to take one each. I decided to allow two for that round but after that round, I said we would only do one at a time. That seemed to appease them and then they got into writing. We didn’t have enough time for a third round of Daily 5 like they usually do, so my CT brought out a mat with different word chunks written on it. They all sat in a circle and took turns throwing a beanbag onto the mat. They had to say the chunk and then say a word in that chunk. So, if it landed on –ot, they had to say something like “not.” It was a good game and it worked really well as a 5-minute activity before recess.

My handwriting/math/poetry lessons were all done this afternoon. Handwriting was quick, and I did that before math to get in a quick lesson before my supervisor arrived. They were very well behaved and liked the “z” animation on that same handwriting website. It was a little better than the usual animations. There are no more letters to learn, so next week, we will start learning to write months and other frequently used words. When my supervisor arrived, the class was quietly working on their handwriting papers. I had them finish up quickly and put their books away and meet me in their spots on the floor. We went through the math lesson easily. I realized that I had dismissed them back to their tables before explaining the second Smartboard activity that I was going to have them work on independently. Instead of that, I kept up the activity that we had done together so that they would all know what to do. My CT liked that I didn’t try to squeeze in the other Smartboard activity and that I stuck with the one they understood. I’m glad I did that, because otherwise it could have been chaos. The good thing is, now I have that game to use for another lesson. That’s good because we used an extra tens and ones matching game later in the day as a quick game to play before we had a fire drill. I may need to swap that out for the Smartboard one I didn’t use in another lesson.
My lesson may be changed around due to possible snow the next two days. We did some planning today and I realized I really need to look at the Balance and Motion science unit that I am doing with the other student teacher next week. We are co-teaching the first two and then I am doing the third lesson, and we alternate from there, co-teaching a few in the middle when we introduce a new section, and co-teaching a review at the end prior to the test. I think that tomorrow night I will write out plans for those and email them to the other student teacher. Then, once we agree on that, we can email it to the rest of the teachers so they know what we are doing. I am nervous about those lessons because they are in front of the entire grade, rather than just in the classroom. I think that once I write it all down in a list I’ll feel better about what is happening and when.

Monday Monday

I’m starting to take over more lessons this week so it should be fun and interesting.  Today I teach two language arts lessons as well as math.  I arrived early for a conflict mediator meeting that my CT runs.  It is a big group of 6th graders that visit classrooms to talk about problem solving and solving conflicts between students.  It was an interesting meeting to sit in on and listen to.  The students were nominated by their teachers and they went through an interview and a 5-day training to become mediators.  They meet monthly to learn a new activity that they will do with a class somewhere in the school.  They sit in on the morning meeting of their assigned class and run it, with conflict resolution skills as the focus.

Last night, I revamped by lesson plan for math today too.  I have a Smartboard game for learning tens and ones where it shows blocks of tens and ones and asks for the correct number.  One student at a time would need to come up to the Smartboard to answer.  To keep the rest of the students occupied and on task, I added an aspect where during the game, the students each have a worksheet and clipboard so that they can write the number of tens and ones on their own sheet as well.  I think this may be a good addition because last time I used just a Smartboard game in the class, students who weren’t up at the board were losing their focus, and it was a suggestion by my CT to always have something to keep the whole class occupied.  

I did lessons on the words of the day and chunk of the day today.  They both went very well and I was prepared for them.  I had forgotten to add in my lesson plan that they usually make up a song for the bonus word.  One student raised his hand and told me he had a song.  I incorporated that into the lesson and they all sang that song.  Then another raised his hand and said he knew another song.  He turned the same song into a rap.  I asked the class to repeat it and they liked it.  I noticed two students in the front row were really not paying attention.  They were fidgeting and I told them if I had to tell them one more time I would give them a time out.  That calmed them down for a few minutes until the end of the lesson.  

I got to read with a student today during Daily 5 because she was working with another teacher when my CT met with her guided reading group.  She is an advanced reader and she only had trouble with one or two hard words.  One of which was “hand-me-down” which she had never heard of.  I had her break it down into individual words and them explained what it meant.  Then she was able to read that word perfectly.

I’m a little nervous because I just got an email from my supervisor saying he can come tomorrow for another observation.  I was hoping I’d get a little more prep time, but I guess it’ll be good to get it over with.  Plus it’s at 12:30 instead of 1:30, so they may be better behaved at that time.  I had planned on a matching game type activity, but my CT said they hadn’t practiced anything like that before so it may not be the best thing to be observed.  She gave me some tips on other game ideas and we came up with a Smartboard game where the students need to build the number using tens and ones blocks.  I will give everyone a basket of tens and ones blocks too so that they can also build them themselves as students come up to build them one at a time on the Smartboard.  I will do the matching game for the next tens and ones lesson, onThursday, or as a morning meeting activity.

My math lesson went pretty well today.  There were a few more good pointers from my CT.  I learned that when we pick a teacher to run a Smartboard game, the teacher should be up there the whole time.  This makes it much easier because I won’t have a million kids asking me “can I be teacher next?”  We also have a class list where we mark off who has been teacher so that everyone gets a turn.  This will be helpful in my lesson tomorrow, as well as in lessons going forward.  One thing I also realized is to instruct the students to put away the materials we had out.  They all had papers on clipboards and I dismissed them back to their seats.  I should have told them to put their clipboards back before going back to their seats.  At least everything got cleaned up soon after the lesson when they packed up for the day.  

Overall, it was a good day, and I don’t have a headache like I did at the end of last week, so that’s an improvement.  I need to work more on my lessons for the rest of the week tonight and email my supervisor the math lesson.  It’ll be good to get tomorrow over with.  Then I can relax for a few weeks, as far as observations go and focus on the big science unit I am planning to do with the whole first grade along with another student teacher.