Posted on February 9th, 2008 by msfrizzlewanabe34
Week three is turning out to be a challenge. Wednesday mother nature decided to dump about 15 inches of snow on us while in school. The students were very excited about this which made it hard to keep their attention while teaching. My co-operating teacher decided to close the blinds on one of the windows so they were not staring outside watching it snow. It has been a long time since this town has seen a full blown blizzard. Driving conditions were extremely slow and many parents came to pick up their children early from school before conditions worsened. I taught my first full length math lesson and was able to maintain their focus for the majority of the lesson. I forgot to go over one page in their math journal but we went over the concept on their slates using counters. Tomorrow I will have them do the page we missed today. It should be good review for them to see how well they remembered the lesson. I shall keep my fingers crossed.
Thursday brings only a few students and I almost get to teach the whole day by myself. One of the other 2nd grade teachers had called in sick but her sub never showed up so my cooperating teacher took over her class. I was very excited and nervous all at the same time with this prospect in mind. But unfortunantly the principal said that I did not have enough time in so we teamed up rooms and taught to both that day.
Friday was mostly an on task day. I was still being apologized to for not having a normal week yet. I just kept telling them that this fine. A little chaos never killed anyone. Well at least not in the sense of a lack of routine due to weather conditions. We celebrated the 100th day of school today and had an Unbirthday party as the theme. Nothing like giving young kids lots of sugar and sending them home from school. God bless teaching. The kids did have fun and were for the most part well behaved. The last 10 minutes of class we started reading a new Arthur book related to birthdays and the students sat nice for this. All in all student teaching has been very interesting thus far.
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Filed under: The beginning, Uncategorized, student teaching, teacher, teaching
Posted on February 3rd, 2008 by msfrizzlewanabe34
Week two is here. I am still ahead of the game. I’m working more with individual students and helping out during math intervention. Monday went well, this will be my first official first week including team meeting with other second grade teachers.
Tuesday went well and I was better prepared for teaching the the D.O.L. I had a better idea of how to help the math intervention students as well as what works best for my special need students. I had also observed those students who should just not be sitting next to each other. I am learning their routine and timing of the schedule. I was all prepped for Wednesday and excited about participating more. Mother Nature however did not see it that way and blessed us with 30 below wind chill factor for the morning. In this instance the school district decided to close the schools. Under normal circumstances I would be fine with this, but this meant that there is now an extra day to student teaching.
Thursday! Well due to the snow day, we are a day behind in reading only. The students are still ahead in math. I did fluency assessments this morning as well as filling in for some teachers on my team. I helped with editing in the computer lab on the students timeline that they did in a program call Time Liner.
Friday! Well it happened again. Student teaching has now been extended yet another day. Due to receiving about 8 inches of snow the schools were closed again. I was able to meet with my co-operating teacher to go over the following weeks lesson plans so we could adjust the lesson plans to make up for the 2 snow days we had in one week. My teacher was apologetic for the chaotic week. I mentioned to her that it is ok, and is something i need to adapt to. I know teaching is never set in stone and that like life this happen and you need to be flexible and go with the flow. Two and half hours later we had all the weeks lesson plans modified and had brain stormed some ideas for activities while we did common reading assessment and planned out the 100th day of school. It was comforting to find out that the way I had marked up the teacher manual with post-its, was the same way my co-op used to do it. I really want to be well prepared for the first formal observation because it will be here before i know it. My week two was quite interesting I can’t wait to see what week three will bring.
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Filed under: The Journey, The beginning, Uncategorized, student teaching
Posted on February 3rd, 2008 by msfrizzlewanabe34
I spent my first week in the classroom getting to know the students. It was a short week due to Martin Luther King Jr. day. When I went in on Monday which was only a half day my goal was to learn the the students names by the time they went home. I watched behaviors to get a feel for the classroom and watched my teacher to see how she dealt with behaviors and certain rules. Tuesday I followed them to specials and once again observed behaviors and helped out where needed and perused several of the teaching manuals. By the end of the day I had the students names memorized along with their faces. Wednesday was a day off for me since technically I was not required to start student teaching until Thursday. Thursday comes and it is my official start to student teaching. I was asked to do D.O.L. and was stunned at my lack of editing skills. I did catch the mistakes that were there I just did not count them out step by step. After that I mostly observed and helped individual students. I looked over more teacher manuals and kept track of the days schedule in order to adjust for timing of lessons. By Friday I was feeling more confident about classroom control. I had more of an idea of what to expect from my students and what their learning levels and styles are. I am glad I went in early because my confidence was not where I felt it should be. I am getting excited to see what week two will hold.
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Filed under: The Journey, The beginning, Uncategorized, student teaching
