In order to catch up on my blogs/journals for this year I am combining a couple together, including today and last Friday!
Friday:
Today was a GREAT day for the kids and for me! It was a good ending to the week and a great beginning to the weekend. I found myself coming home wanting to tell my finace EVERYTHING that happened at school today! The morning went well, we had Art right away then came back for a short group time and headed off to computer lab. It is amazing how much the students LOVE the computer lab and how well they do while they are in there. Even though there are few problems with talking loudly and not staying on task, they usually do a great job with doing their "work" on the computer. I pulled a couple of them for a Phonemic Awareness assessment individually while during this time, and this was a different experience. I started with some of the higher kids and they did a great job waiting for me to figure out the next question, although at some point all of them seemed to get bored at a certain point or confused, so I would stop and have to go back and finish them another time. This part of the year seems to be the hardest part to get through, I can't imagine how I would do it by myself in a class this size! Before I knew it the morning was over and it was choice time! While we were sitting during Choice Time we had not one but TWO kids loose a tooth! I am thinking about getting some tooth holders to put them in that they can put their tooth in and it has less of a chance of getting loss in their backpack. One of the kids was VERY excited for the other student to lose her tooth within 5 minutes of him and he was shouting "Congradulations!" and "Good job!" It was very funny and cute, he also gave her a hug and took her down to the office to get a tooth holder! :)
Monday:
Today was a different day, I think after the weekend comes and goes its hard for them to get back into the routine right away, so today was a little rough. I started out by observing Lauri with Jen (field instructor) and looking at the different ways that Lauri teaches and how the kids react and are engaged to what she is teaching. There were lots of great things that Jen and I both said about Lauri including how she is consistent with the kids, always asking questions, always engaging them, always keeping them excited about the story. She also does a great job of being consistent with getting them to not blurt out, which I am also working on at the same time. I also took more of a notice of how much modeling we really do when reading to the kids or doing "guess the covered word." These are simple strategies that the children need to constantly practice these strategies in order to be able to read. As I plan my unit to teach I am focusing on modeling these same strategies over and over again, because the more they learn and remember those strategies, the better, and more independent, readers they become. The rest of the day went by pretty quickly, but I'm excited that tomorrow I will be teaching a lesson to the green and yellow group called Making Words. The point of the lesson is to notice small words inside bigger words, helping the students to learn new words and see that there are letters inside of the word and not just the whole word. This is quite a challenge for some of the students but it will be interesting how they develop with this same lesson over the semester.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Back to the first grade!
Hi, everyone! So my first couple weeks of teaching in first grade is going pretty well. There have been many challenges and things that I have had to learn and overcome but things are getting better day by day. It is great to see a variety of students from different backgrounds and with different levels of skill, but discouraging at times as well. One day they are doing great, and the next they can be crazy or not know their letters, or even be gone from the school. We have had a lot of changes within the last couple of weeks and I'm slowly getting used to the changes that we are having to face.
Some things to reflect on these past few weeks so far would be classroom management. This is something that although I am learning day by day, it seems to be getting more difficult. I don't know if it is a lack of confidence in myself, or I am not able to keep the childrens' attention, or they are just not focused on the task at hand. We have very long group times but are changing that so hopefully they will be able to pay attention for a longer period and then do work and come back later to group for instruction. We shall see how this plays out, but the good thing is I am learning more and more clues to get them to look at me and pay attention as well as being more firm with them while instructing and on a one on one basis. There are some important things I have noticed in the past couple weeks that I would like to address and work on before my guided lead teaching.
The first thing is to be able to plan a lesson and unit that will engage and focus on ALL levels and ALL of the students needs. Yes, this is a HUGE challenge, but one that I plan to face when planning for my guided lead teaching. There are so many students that need lots of help but others that need a challenge to keep them engaged, so this will be one of my goals as I go through the next couple of weeks planning and preparing for teaching.
Another thing I am going to focus on is retaining the attention of my students. There has to be some small thing that I can do to have their attention stay during a lesson so that they are all engaged and learning, I am not sure what it is but I plan to try some things during my guided lead teaching in order to help this problem with our classroom right now.
I understand that procedures are a large part of our class but at some point I would like the kids to be having fun. By integrating games, technology, and music into my lessons I want to use some different areas of school to help the students have fun and learn at the same time. This may be a rap or song that I teach them, or a new game that will help them learn the lesson better.
These are just a few of the challenges that I am facing to overcome but I know I will eventually get there. I am LOVING my first grade class and they make me smile every day. :-)
Keep growing, keep learning!
Some things to reflect on these past few weeks so far would be classroom management. This is something that although I am learning day by day, it seems to be getting more difficult. I don't know if it is a lack of confidence in myself, or I am not able to keep the childrens' attention, or they are just not focused on the task at hand. We have very long group times but are changing that so hopefully they will be able to pay attention for a longer period and then do work and come back later to group for instruction. We shall see how this plays out, but the good thing is I am learning more and more clues to get them to look at me and pay attention as well as being more firm with them while instructing and on a one on one basis. There are some important things I have noticed in the past couple weeks that I would like to address and work on before my guided lead teaching.
The first thing is to be able to plan a lesson and unit that will engage and focus on ALL levels and ALL of the students needs. Yes, this is a HUGE challenge, but one that I plan to face when planning for my guided lead teaching. There are so many students that need lots of help but others that need a challenge to keep them engaged, so this will be one of my goals as I go through the next couple of weeks planning and preparing for teaching.
Another thing I am going to focus on is retaining the attention of my students. There has to be some small thing that I can do to have their attention stay during a lesson so that they are all engaged and learning, I am not sure what it is but I plan to try some things during my guided lead teaching in order to help this problem with our classroom right now.
I understand that procedures are a large part of our class but at some point I would like the kids to be having fun. By integrating games, technology, and music into my lessons I want to use some different areas of school to help the students have fun and learn at the same time. This may be a rap or song that I teach them, or a new game that will help them learn the lesson better.
These are just a few of the challenges that I am facing to overcome but I know I will eventually get there. I am LOVING my first grade class and they make me smile every day. :-)
Keep growing, keep learning!
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