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.