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.