Week 4: Ups and Downs (Pt. 1)

Sorry for the day-late post ;-)

This week was interesting, to say the least!

Tuesday: Well, today was one of those days that I've heard about from other student teachers, but had yet to experience... pretty rough. It started out fine when I was beginning the reading lesson and trying to get the giant book of chart paper to stand up so I could write on it. Using the whiteboard ledge seemed like a good idea, so that's where I put it, despite the students saying it probably wasn't going to work. Of course, after it fell one of the students said "I told you you shouldn't have done it!!" ;-) I wasn't quite sure how to proceed with the reading lesson, so my CT helped me out. She showed me that it's OK to REALLY lead the students toward the answers, because they don't have a ton of background knowledge to allow them to be able to figure out the characteristics of fiction books on their own!
The hard part today was the students' behaviors. This testing-me-thing is getting crazy! For example: I began to give them their Sentence Dictation test, and one of the students gets up in the middle of my directions to move to a different seat. I asked her to sit back down, but she kept walking. She got to her new spot and began setting up her privacy folders, despite the fact that I asked her to move back to her seat. I felt kind of mean, but I grabbed her folders and moved them back to her desk. Thank goodness she followed!
My supervisor came in today to meet my CT and see how it was going, since I started SUPER early.
At the end of the day, I was giving out Neat Treats, and I was telling the students how much I wished I could give out a neat treat to one of the students, but I couldn't because there was no name on it. Of course the quietest girl, who is super sweet and doesn't always understand everything, got up to put her name on it, then went to take a Neat Treat. If it was anyone but her, I would have been like "You forgot your name, so you can't have one this time..." ...But it was her. I just let her have one, and I felt awful about it!!! I just couldn't make her sad like that!! Oh well, I'll do better next time...

Helpful Hints:
-Re-explain centers on Day 2, so that students are able to remember your expectations. It really helped when my CT did it!

Wednesday: There were a lot more happy moments today (yay!), but the behavior was still a problem. I need to stop thinking of them as just these cute little kids with good intentions, and realize that they ARE able to understand why we should be quiet when a classmate is talking, etc., etc. They're just so cute!
Today they realized that I'm left-handed. Apparently, none of them have ever met someone who is! It was quite an experience ;-) I told them that me writing with my right hand is like them writing with their left hand, so of course they wanted to see, and try it themselves! I said later, if we had enough time after the lesson. The morning actually was pretty smooth after that! In addition to the subjects I've already taken on, today I got to teach Theme Time, since I found the poem for that time :-) Again, I felt like I was leading them directly to the answers, but maybe that's just what they needed. It'll take some time for me to just know automatically what they're capable of.

Helpful Hints:
-Sending students to sit in different squares on the carpet was really helpful during the read-aloud. They needed some sort of separation today!

Need a Smile?
-I had them ROAR every time the book said to, because my ROAR-ing sounds like a squeak ;-)
-One of my students told me today that he used positive thinking twice, and it worked, so he's going to use it at home!!! I'm so proud! haha.
-Randomly throughout the day, a student would break into dance. He's pretty good at the robot thing!!
-At the end of the day, I was talking to one of the students. He looked back down the hallway, then forward really fast and said "I can't look that way, there's a girl I know!" I said "Oh? Why can't you look at her?" He said "She's really cute." ADORABLE!!!!
-I learned how to use the book binding machine today... and managed to fling the binding in my face. What an experience ;-)

I think I'll post Thursday and Friday later, because these entries always feel so extremely long!!