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
Posted on January 22nd, 2008 by msfrizzlewanabe34
Third quarter is upon us student teachers. What this means is that those of us within the happy little Stritch Cohort begin our student teaching as of Thursday the 24th. I have been dropping in on and off with my co-operating teacher since last week. I took advantage of the the half day on Monday and all day today. It was very interesting watching the students behavior today. They were all very chatty and off task. I wonder if the full moon had anything to do with it or maybe the fact that they all get Wednesday off due to a teacher workday. I will go in tomorrow to assist my co-operating teacher with switching over boards and setting up new centers for the new quarter. I also have my meeting with the Stritch professor in the afternoon to go over expectations of my student teaching course.
I now have in my possession two teacher manuals to peruse through to plan out my lessons that I will teach. After watching the teacher today, I see that there is a lot of guiding still in second grade, a lot of modeling still and constant maternal reprimand to stay on task. As I work with several of the students over the past few days I begin to feel more confident in what I will do and how I will do it. I look forward to jumping right in to getting all those long, long lesson plans out of the way.
In my midst of hanging out in the classroom over the past few days, I have already obtained much gossip that floats around a school. I find it quite interesting, and take it for what it is worth.
Stay tuned…….
More to come…….
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Filed under: The Journey, The beginning, student teaching
Posted on January 20th, 2008 by msfrizzlewanabe34
This week Thursday is the official start to 3rd quarter but I will be hanging out with my new students as of Monday just to get a start on things. I feel like I will need all the time I can get and still am nervous about the concept of taking over someone else’s classroom. I wonder if it would of been beneficial for me to have taken up substitute teaching as opposed to other directions that I went. Well lucky for me, Monday is only a half day, Tuesday is a full day and there is no school for Wednesday but it is a teacher workday and my informational meeting between the college supervisor and my co-operating teacher.
I am curious as to how I will write these lesson plans for some of the content being taught. That is pretty much my goal for the week is to talk with my co-op and decide what is being taught for the following week so I may begin writing up those so adored full length lesson plans. I have not decided what content to pick first. My weakest in teaching would be Math and Social Studies content. This is due to the fact that within my clinical’s I never taught these contents. I am tempted to ask to take over math first just to get more practice at it. Unfortunantly this school does not study Social Studies everyday it is squeezed in when time allows or at least once a week. Perhaps yet another goal will be to incorporate the less taught curriculum and weave it into other areas.
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Filed under: The Journey, The beginning, student teaching
