4th week update!

There was a lot of firsts in my class this week! 

-I am now officially the person who goes over the seatwork in the morning with the students. The seat work is math problems, which I am thankful for because those are my speciality ;) The kids seem to respect me while I am going over the answers and the students always volunteer. I am also getting better at breaking down the questions to help the students understand.  

-I was given an advance reading group to work with everyday this week. The teachers edition had a layout of questions to ask but I was the one to faciliate the discussion. The group went well and the kids are very smart, but there were many behavior problems that I had to address such as taking away pencils and moving seats. I will also being teaching my first ITIP lesson to this group Feb 13th. I told the students that my coordinator was coming and they got really excited. Hopefully they will listen better on that day :) 

-I went on my first field trip as a teacher. In the morning my teacher let me create the groups for the field trip. It was harder than I thought it was going to be because I was trying to avoid all of the potential behavior problems. We went to Fredrick Meijer Gardens. The bus ride was interesting to say the least. The kids were bouncing off the walls. When we arrived the students were split into groups and I was with a group of 12 students. The doscent shows us around and it was awesome. I also filled out the comment form that the teacher completes at the end of the trip. I felt like I had a lot of responsibility like a real teacher!

-I taught my first whole group lesson today. Mrs. Baxter gave me the lesson plan yesterday so I had time to prepare. The lesson was relating their past poetry experience to a rap. After rapping to the class an example and pointing out the writing features of a rap, we started to create our own as a class. I gave the idea that we should write it about our field trip and the students agreed. They were all engaged in the lesson which is hard to come by with this set of students. We started sharing ideas and will continue on monday. It was a really fun experience. I will post the rap on here once it is complete.

-I also stayed 3 full days instead of one to complete my observations. I observed a 2nd grade classroom with a younger teacher and a fifth grade classroom with a more experienced one. I loved them! I was there for a classroom meeting with the fifth graders and I learned a lot about management plans. 

Overall, it was a great week!