Week 8: Ummm... what?

Quite honestly, I don't remember much of this week at all. I don't even know if I took a single note!!! ...OK, I found 3 little notes, but that's it. Time to use those lesson plans to aid my memory!!

Mon:
NO SCHOOL!!! Yay!! ;-)

Tues:
TOO MANY ASSESSMENTS!!! The kids are tired, I'm tired... wish we could all take a break... but no, first there are reading tests, then word work tests, then math tests... does it ever end?

Wed:
Oh, hello Administrators!! 7 of them came into the room during reading instruction, and the kids stopped answering my questions. They were too scared to even spell the word "the" for me!!! Poor kids. Of course, I was shaking in my boots, too -- all I kept thinking was, "I swear I'm better than this!!! These kids are so smart!!!"
Today I started getting behind in lessons... oh no, they're building up!!

Thurs:
Welcome, Supervisor!
I had my first supervisor observation. I was nervous all morning, and for the first few minutes while he was there. Once I got going, though, I felt so much better!! It was just natural :-) Using Rex (our class 'pet') to keep them quiet worked quite well. My supervisor had nothing but positive comments, and the one thing my CT noticed that I could improve when I began, I fixed myself during the course of the lesson. Whew!!

Fri:
Oh. My. Goodness. Too tired to even think. My energy just dropped continuously all day...
I was SO glad when my CT stepped in during writing -- I just needed a few minutes to motivate myself to finish off the day!
We were trying to make it through so many things today, just going and going and going! I wish I would have had the energy to do it!! Oh well, I'm sure that's not the last time I'll have a day like that, I think I can give myself a break...
One fun thing I did was to use the computer/tv connection to write narratives with the kids when I couldn't get the overhead to work. It was very nice.

Report card time is just insane! I feel like the work just never ended this week!! Thank goodness report cards are only 3 times a year :-)

Here's the only Need a Smile? moment I wrote down:
--During one of the assessments, I saw two students [a girl and a boy] holding hands across the desks! (If you watch The Office, they were actually playing with their hands the way Michael and Holly were in one of the recent episodes!!) ...Then I realized they were passing a little bouncy ball back and forth, but it was still kind of a shock! Very cute, though :-)

Even after a weekend, I'm still super tired. Guess it's bedtime!
I'll post a few pictures that I've had, though... then goodnight!!!

1: One of the other 1st grade teachers posted a bulletin board with a center that I'd helped create -- I was so excited to see it hanging up!!!!
2: 100th day activity! Counting their snack into groups of 10 to make 100 :-)
3: "Some bunny loves you" cards for Valentine's Day. I painted their hands to stamp, and my own hands came away with a little more color ;-)
4: A cute bulletin board I hung up -- my CT's ideas, but it was so adorable I just had to get a picture! ;-)

Week 7 is just a blur!!

WHOOSH!!! ...That is the sound this week made as it FLEW by!

This week's schedule was messed up due to the music show the 2nd and 3rd graders put on. The specials were mostly in the morning, then Thursday we got to watch their dress rehearsal :-) Before we went, I reminded the 1st graders of what it means to be a good audience (since I'm a performer, I know how frustrating it is to have a bad audience!). They were FANTASTIC. I was so happy with them -- but they weren't the only ones! It seems the younger kids are (surprisingly) the best audience members.

It was a full moon week--the behavior was pretty insane. By Tuesday I decided that I'd like to assign the kids spots on the carpet, because there were SO many issues with who gets to sit by who, and this person talking to that person, and kids getting almost stepped on (by me, as I try making my way to the whiteboard, despite telling them every day to just leave that last row of squares open for me to walk on!)... etc., etc. They were fine on Tuesday, but by Wednesday they were asking to be able to sit wherever they want. I said maybe next week, if their behavior improved this week. We'll see how next Tuesday goes...

My CT actually had to have a talk with them, too, because they couldn't follow any of her directions, either! It's kind of infuriating... which is frustrating to me, because I generally have a lot of patience with kids. I hope this is just an off week, I don't want to lose that patience!!! I don't know how much easier we could make it for them... but I do have to keep in mind that they are just 1st graders, and their attention span is short. The long afternoons were probably worse for them than they were for us!!

Because of the morning craziness (our class had to lead the pledge this week, and our specials were in the morning instead of afternoon), Word Study/Word Work/Word something! got pushed off until we found time later... which didn't happen until Thursday afternoon! Talk about Ketchup work!! ;-)

My favorite activity of the week was on Wednesday. Our class and the class next door went on an adventure together -- I got to put my theatre camp acting skills to the test! ;-) I read Nice Try, Tooth Fairy to the classes, and at the end a note from the Tooth Fairy fell out!!! Oh my goodness, what does it say?? Well, she gave us a clue of where she went... so we followed her clue to the library. We didn't find a tooth, but she did leave us some floss! Her next clue led to the lunch room, where she left us some mints. Her last clue led us to the nurse's office, where she left us toothbrushes. They were so excited, it definitely rubbed off on me!! It was fantastic :-)

This week I was also able to sit in on a meeting about a student who'd been having difficulties. Luckily, everyone on the team had seen improvement, so they didn't have to implement any new help. The best part of the meeting was when the School Psychologist asked my CT if an idea is realistic in the classroom, instead of just telling her to try it. It was SO nice to see that she understood that teachers have a limited time as it is, and that new ways to help students would be nice, but are not always possible.

Friday was a teacher institute day. The morning was interesting, if not only for the material, but for the conversations with my CT, PSH, and some of the other staff. More on that later...
The topic being covered at the training was about a new framework the district is adopting to evaluate teachers. This information will definitely be helpful for me to keep in mind as I teach, and if I happen to get a job in the district, it will be nice that I know what they're evaluating me on ahead of time!!
The afternoon was excruciating... the teachers split into grade-level teams to discuss the descriptions for report cards. That means they had to go through every sub-category of every subject and write how students are doing: exceeds, proficient, basic, or below basic. Now, this might have been more interesting if I had a working knowledge of what should be expected of students in each sub-category, but I don't... so I just listened... for 3 hours... ouch. Oh well, it's one of those things that I can add to my experiences, and maybe one day it will have proved useful (even though I don't see it now) :-)

Anyway, back to the talking this morning. [ Warning: This deals with politics. If you'd rather ignore it, please feel free to stop reading now. Thanks ;-) ] It mainly revolved around the situation in Wisconsin, which is driving me INSANE. It has brought out some of the worst comments towards teachers that I've heard... and the bill is just ridiculous (in my opinion). Teachers don't earn enough as it is, what makes the governor think that teachers can afford to pay any extra for benefits? Or that teachers don't deserve the right to collective bargaining? Or that the unions need to go, when they're not the ones increasing the state deficit? Even the firefighter's union (which is exempt from the bill) is fighting on the other public workers' behalf!
After all of my extra research (yes, that is what I spent the majority of my Saturday doing), I learned that it isn't even necessary!! It's so frustrating. It's not even about public workers, it's about eliminating political competition. I'm sorry, that is just out of line. I don't care what your political views are, isn't it just healthy to have the competition between parties, so that each side can balance the other? I don't think many people would be happy at all if one party had complete control -- I believe a majority of people are moderate, so the balance just works. I suppose I should step off my soap box, though... maybe there's something I'm missing, even after reading the entire bill for myself...

Well, so ends Week 7. Three more weeks left in first grade!

Need a Smile?
-Student loses a 'tooth' from a project: "Awww, that was my good tooth!"
-Student from next door: "It's so hot in here!" [[ Background: my CT loves her room warm, which I love, but everyone else gets overwhelmed by! There's always comments about the temperature in her room by other teachers, having it come from another student was just funny :-) ]]

Week 6 & Week 7, Day 1: Oh, those lovely little ones!

Time has completely gotten away from me. Now that I'm teaching more during the day, I have less time to write notes, and it's MUCH harder to remember the details of each day! I'm LOVING the experience, but I do wish I could remember more details!! I don't even think I'll list things day-by-day, I'll just try to remember highlights...

The subjects I've been teaching for Week 6 are Reading, Word Work, Math, and Theme time. The only subjects remaining are Writing (which I've started in Week 7), and Guided Reading. Wow! Almost a full day, and I am t-i-r-e-d!

Math will be the death of me. I understand what my CT has been talking about!! The ideas behind all the lessons are fantastic... putting them into practice, however, is not as easy as they make it sound. In order to get through everything the book suggests, we'd need at least two hours every day for math... and probably 2 extra teachers in the room to make sure students at every level are taken care of. In any regular classroom, that's impossible. I tried one lesson just using an overhead of the packet they have to complete daily, and not allowing students to rush ahead of me. That was MUCH less stressful, and we finished in the right amount of time, but I felt bad that the students who could clearly grasp the material were just sitting in their seats waiting for their classmates. I worry about saying that if they understand it, they can just move on, though, because some students who think they understand (but really don't) will rush ahead, and then it will take even more time to get them caught up!!! [Please excuse that run-on sentence ;-) ]] Plus, then I'd have to stop teaching every time a student finished to make sure they completed the packet successfully, which would make managing the other students extremely difficult. There's gotta be a way to do this better, but I have yet to think of it...

Funnily enough, I love doing math myself, but I'm enjoying the Word Work lessons best!!! Though I am quite the grammar queen, so that makes sense! I don't feel like the lessons I've done so far have been amazing, but they're much better than the spelling lessons I remember from my elementary school years.

The themes for Week 6 were Valentine's Day and President Lincoln. I enjoyed the honesty lessons, because I love the feeling of teaching something that I think is valuable to the kids' lives, not just to their schooling. I only hope that they take it all to heart :-)
They had some SUPER cute things with the Valentine's theme! "You're really cute!" "First kiss" (to which my response was, "I hope you're talking about Hershey's Kisses!!!" haha.) etc., etc.

I'm a huge nerd: I LOVE making worksheets and activities on the computer! I like being able to make it look perfect to me, and fit the needs that I have. I also feel so much better about doing something, and not just taking what the team of first grade teachers give me. I know it's not super necessary, and that it's totally OK to use their resources (especially at this point in my 'career'), but I feel bad doing that all the time. I'm not used to being handed things, and I don't want to take without giving back because I feel indebted (my CT and PSH have both reiterated this). These women are already giving me so much!!! I wish I had more time to make those things for everyone :-)

It's pretty exciting to see how attached I've gotten to these kids, since I was kind of worried before the experience started that I wouldn't really be a part of the classroom! The few little troublemakers in the class concern me the most, and not because they're disruptive: I'm truly worried about the path they're starting down already! I just want them to be able to make the right decisions and turn out to be fantastic, good people. I don't want to see any of these kids turn into bullies, or drop out of school, or commit crimes. I'm already worried that some of them will. I wish there were something I could do help them, but I know a lot of their personalities and decisions come from their home life... it's tough to see. I wish I couldn't see the bad potential of any of the first graders... I wish they could all be sweet and innocent!!!! Oh well, I guess that's a part of teaching I'll have to get used to...

Today was a fun day for the first day of Week 7! It was Valentine's Day. I brought in Valentine's cards for the kids (and teachers!), and when I got there my CT told me she had signed my name on her treats, too! She is so thoughtful--I really appreciate her inclusiveness!! I decided to sign my cards from Cupid, and put them on the desks before the students got to class so they wouldn't know the cards were from me :-) Unfortunately, the kids didn't know who Cupid is!!!!! Oh well, I tried ;-) I loved watching Charlie Brown's valentine video, too!!

Here are some of the Need a Smile? moments I can remember -- sadly I didn't write any Helpful Hints down!!
-Messy student: "My mom tells me I'm a pig!" (Oh, thank goodness it's not only at school!)
-Answer for -unk family question (by multiple students): Drunk. (Ummmm... I don't know that that's school appropriate... let's erase that answer!)
-Student spelling of "recess" : "wheeses." It was totally adorable, written the way he says it!
-Me: "I didn't know until today that it was possible to shock your head!" (After laminating a bunch of things, I always shock myself... today I just happened to have touched my head to the metal cart the machine is on!)
-Sooooo many of the students are using positive thinking -- they make me smile :-)
-My CT brought an A&F bag that was holding a couple supplies... she has it hidden away in a cabinet, but we open the cabinet for shopping on Fridays. One of the students saw the bag and just said "Really? Really??" It was SO funny!!!!

My supervisor will be coming to observe later this week... I hope I can get some energy for the rest of this week!!

Week 5: Day 5... or, um, 3

Well, since my CT told me I was on fire this morning, I'm going to go with "Today was a fantastic day!!!" ;-)

It felt hard to get back into things since we had 2 days off in the middle of the week, but it all worked out! I had to remind that even though we had two days off, we're back in school so we have to raise our hands. They did pretty well remembering after that :-)
Calendar & reading were fine. During centers, one of the students who usually has a few things to catch up on finished ALL of her work!! I was SO excited for her, and she looked super pleased that she did it!!! I let the students use their individual whiteboards for Word Work, then we did a cute worksheet! It didn't take as long as expected, so I let them doodle on the back of their worksheet when they were finished.
Lunch was an interesting time, as it always is with PSH!! That was quite an experience to see how close the staff get to each other ;-)
After lunch, we had our read-aloud, then our Topic 9 assessments for math. Some of the kids FLEW through it, but usually they do the test all together since a few kids need the questions read to them. The ones who finished just had to sit quietly at their desks until I finished going through the test with the others. When I graded them, almost everyone got 100%! That was pretty impressive :-) I think patterns are pretty easy for them to figure out, though. The rest of the day was nice, they did a poem and shopped at the classroom store. I was worried they were going to be late for the bus at the end of the day, but we made it!! Happy Friday! ;-)

Helpful Hints:
-Visuals are always nice to have for lessons.

Need a Smile?
-Student: "I was sad when they said there was another snow day, I wanted to come back!!" Another student: "I didn't!" Me: "Awwww, you don't like spending time with me and CT??" Second student: "Well, I do..." Chorus of students: "I do! I wanted to be here!" ;-) Adorable.

More Week 5: snow, Snow, SNOW!!!!

Tuesday: Still sick... but today was pretty good!! I tried to zoom through everything in the morning so that we had time to finish the 100 day activities my CT wanted to fit in, but it just didn't happen. I was super excited to read My Many Colored Days to the kids, so when a few of them were supposed to leave for extra help, they didn't want to go! Their teacher said they could stay for the book :-) My CT said it was a good sign that I got them so excited for a book! After reading it, I made a worksheet for them to do that said "Today I feel (insert color) because..." and they got to fill it in and draw a picture. I really like how most of them turned out, and it was nice to see how they were all feeling. They got to throw their snowballs, then we did a really ...exciting... (read: plain) Word Work lesson. They all seem to get the point though :-)
After lunch was a read aloud and my first full math lesson! I now understand my CT's frustration with it... For problem #1, I went through each instruction specifically, twice... and they still didn't get it. So for problem #2, I went through the instructions, had them repeat the instructions, AND gave picture clues for each step on the board. Guess what? ...They STILL missed some things! So then I decided that some of them were just not going to get it, so I needed to keep going for the ones that did, and just catch the other ones up bit by bit... otherwise, that math lesson would have taken the entire day!
During special time, my CT was able to leave since she lives farther away from the school, and they didn't want her to get stuck in the snowstorm. The lovely substitute who came in asked if I would just like to finish the day, so I decided to go for it :-) I rushed through a lot, though, because I really wanted to get through all the activities my CT left. We spent probably 15 minutes finishing the writing activity from before special time, then made our "friends" for Thursday's narrative assignment, and spent the last 10 minutes writing about what we had learned in 100 days in first grade. My CT was super excited about the last activity, so I practically begged them to do their best work... unfortunately, the results were not quite as spectacular as I'd hoped they would be...
In that last hour, however, I found true love. It's http://www.vickiblackwell.com/timer.html . A classroom timer that my CT shows on the TV so all the kids can see their time remaining. AND... it RINGS!! It was SO wonderful -- I could say 3 minutes and actually follow through on that amount of time, to make sure we had time to work on all the assignments! And they could see how fast they needed to work. Thank goodness for that :-D

Overall, though, it was a fun experience! I'm excited I could actually write about it today, since dance classes were canceled, too! And... SNOW DAY TOMORROW!!!!!

Now I have time to get my voice back after today ;-) Hope everyone enjoys their day off, and happy birthday to one of the CT Kids!!! <3:-) [[It's a birthday hat... I think!]]