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!