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!!
Question - What did you do for your lesson on honesty? My school has a character trait of the month. I couldn't think of anything "easy" for honesty...since most of my students need something at a first grade level, I was wondering if you had any ideas to share:-D
ReplyDeleteYou're making a great teacher Kelli! Don't worry! I'm sure your kids love you:-D And don't worry about the kids not knowing who Cupid is...were you able to try to explain to them who Cupid is? There are so many times my kids have no idea what I'm talking about. But some times they need people who talk to them like they're people too.
Keep up the good work! I love your blog!
Hi Karlie!
ReplyDeleteFunny, our school does the character trait of the month thing, too! We did 2 lessons on honesty. One was a lesson another 1st grade teacher found -- there were cards for the students to cut out that said either "honest" or "dishonest." I had the students color the "honest" card green and the "dishonest" card red. Then there were a few stories that told of an honest situation or a dishonest situation, and the students had to decide which card to hold up. If I called on them, they told me why it was honest or dishonest. Of course, we discussed what honesty means before all of this :-)
The second lesson was one that I found and altared. I found some examples of how Lincoln was honest in his life, so I typed them up to read to the kids (after we read a 1st-grade-friendly biography about Lincoln). Then we made a list on the board of ways that they could be honest. I made a worksheet that said "I am honest because..." and the students had to finish writing how they were honest, then draw a picture to go with it. They actually turned out really well! We made a class book with those sheets :-)
Thanks so much, Karlie!! I did get to explain it to them, and most of them figured it out -- the next day there was a worksheet with Cupid on it, and they all knew who he was! ;-)