Thursday's Post

posting on Friday morning because I didn't get a chance to get on here last night:


Well we had another snow day yesterday. I am all planned up through the end of next week, so I finally took a day to (mostly) relax. I fixed up a few lesson plans and did some work on the Drexel discussion boards, which is sometimes tough to fit in, but besides that, I exercised and cooked and tried to enjoy the day off.

The morning went by quickly and I didn’t have any lessons to do. The afternoon was pretty crazy though and I did a lot. It was definitely tiring. I went too long on my handwriting lesson. It was a new type of handwriting lesson, so I hadn’t tried it before. Instead of writing letters, they were writing words. I had them bring white boards to the front and practice writing. Then I had volunteers come up to write the words. Then they went back to their desks to complete the worksheets. I realized that this took too much time, and they did get plenty of chances to practice on their worksheets, so next time, I think I will just demonstrate the words on the white board or Smartboard and then have them go back to do their worksheets. That should speed it up. Because that lesson went too long, I have a mini word work lesson that I need to squeeze in tomorrow. I think I will try to do that after math tomorrow, since the math lesson tomorrow is a pretty quick one.

My science lesson in pit was ok today. It was my first time doing it alone. It was a little difficult to get 62 kids under control, but the other teachers helped when I needed it. I think I’ll get better at it, but 62 first graders are difficult to manage. They did seem to really like the lesson, which involved using wire and clothespins to balance a pencil on its point on top of a popsicle stick. The kids were definitely excited to try it and amazed to see the pencil balancing. I think the next few lessons will be even more exciting. Vanessa teaches on tomorrow, so at least I’ll get a little break while we go to pit.

Computers was pretty cool, and the class had fun putting together more of their power point presentations.