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.