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.
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