Week in Review, It's almost Valentine's Day!
Hi Everyone,
A quick repeat post just like last week. Give us a glimpse of your week in the classroom with a highlight and a speedbump.
Please post by Tuesday, and then also respond to at least one other comment. I haven't seen your comments from last week, but wanted to make sure you know who Eric is. He is student teaching in the Boise area in Music, so we've asked him to attend our "blog seminars" and participate. He is a Coug, so welcome him accordingly!
:-)
Heidi
posted by Heidi @ 4:05 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Happy Valentines Day!!
Welcome Eric! Excited to see how things go for you in Idaho! :)
Last week was AWESOME! I created a couple lessons for To Kill a Mockingbird that my cooperating teacher loved and the lesson went extremely well. Right now, my teacher is giving me more responsibility but still kind of holding my hand. I bring her lessons that I create and she looks over them, giving suggestions as she sees fit.
I had one main speedbump last week during one period that I was teaching. My teacher decided to take half the day off, so I had 4th period all to myself... Well, those kids milked the fact that Allie was gone. I hated feeling like the "mean teacher" because the students kept acting out moreso than normal, so I had to keep quieting them down and getting them on task. It was NOT fun! I was facilitating a literature circle, so much of the lesson was discussion - and when the students were on task they were GREAT! But primarily, I was getting a lot of attitude from one student. In fact, apparently she's been a problem enough before that her parents are coming after school today..
Overall last week was great! There were some ah-ha(!) moments and the kids were able to connect to the text a little better. :D
Hello Everybody,
Happy Valentine's Day to you too, Amy--and everyone else! I had many high points this week. My favorite was with the symphonic band today (the non-audition ensemble). There were missing people so I rearranged them to eliminate holes in the seating. They really focused and acheived a greater tone quality and had better intonation as an ensemble. I also challenged them to listen across the entire ensemble and match the other sections. This was more successful with rearranged seating! the other music educators in the room (there were two others) heard the difference in their sound and were excited.
I don't have a real speedbump. The guitar students have started to fifure out that I'm here to stay and that I'm now in charge. Some of them are trying to test the limits. It wasn't too difficult to deal with. I believe I have an advantage due to the fact that I taught for three years in public schools already. I fully anticipated their antics.
The advanced guitar class only has seven students. I am really starting to connect with them. They are excited as I have been able to help them do new and exciting things and improve on things they have worked on before (my supervising teacher does not play guitar).
Amy, the only comment I have is stick to your guns. As you indicated, the students that test you are usually the challenging students for your supervising teacher as well. I'm glad you got to spend time doing it without the safety net.
Good luck everyone!
Eric
My highlight for this week was on Friday. I had to come in late because we were getting a new roommate and I had to meet with the guy in charge of the apartment. When I arrived, I thought I could just sneak in, instead everyone noticed and almost every student got out of their seat to come over and give me a hug, and of course, tell me a little story. It was so refreshing because the day before had been a hard day for me. For all those kids to come up and hug me really reminded me why I am here and the impact I’ve already had on them. My struggle has been classroom management, this week I have really focused on following through and holding students responsible for their actions. Also, this week I have been working on staying proactive with my classroom management instead of dealing with issues as they come up, I remind the students about the standards in the morning, I’ve been using “I” statements to explain why I am upset. I can tell they are in the transition from Ms. Stellato’s style to my style of teaching. I’m just working through it the best I can.
Amy,
I have also been left alone twice with the group. I had the same scenario, I spent more time keeping the kids on task than teaching. It was difficult because I don't want to be that mean teacher who makes the entire 1st grade flip a card (the worst thing ever for 6 year olds!), but at times the card chart is my only resolution. My teacher talked with me last week about using the chart more, ugh. I know that I need to but it's hard for me. Keep up the good work, before we know it we won't have our hands held anymore and it's up to us! Well that's scary/exciting!
The struggle of the week was trying to get the kids engaged with a sense of urgency. Sometimes I feel like they get lazy or know that we’ll be spending however long it takes to get an assignment done and it only makes them prolong what they need to do. I’d like to get into more of a timed schedule so that the kids realize they only have a certain amount of time to work on something, and that their consequence for not getting it done results in incompletion and not getting praised or rewarded bumble bee stamps.
The highlight of the week was going to a literacy workshop where we learned about the 8 components of a balanced literacy. We talked about writer’s workshop and guided reading. Most of what I was taught WSU came up in the conference workshop which made me feel more confident about what I was taught in school. My teacher and I had a good talk about what we wanted to implement in the classroom and we’re going to start that up next week with mini reading/writing centers and more guided reading. I’d like to also have the students become more autonomous with editing and revising their writing work. Teaching them how to assess themselves.
I have enjoyed reading your entries.
I forgot to post for this week. Lets see if I can remember what happened a couple weeks ago. It seems like so much longer.
I don't remember any major highlights. I do remember though that my teacher let me grade the test. It was a painful experience. Even though I had not taught any of the material, I still felt responsible for their grades. I never actually calculated the average out but I would imagine it was in the range of 20-40%. The first time through we graded each problem right or wrong with no partial credit. This tends to make the scores a little bit lower, but the thought is that we could let them do test corrections back for points back and then get partial credit there. Even just grading for right and wrong it took me a long time to grade the tests because I couldn't do more than maybe 10 tests at a time. It was nice though because one of my roommates was in the same position grading 8th grade English papers.
Other than that though, it was a good week.
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