Looking ahead

I think that it will feel strange on Monday that I will not be completely in charge of the class anymore. In a way, I think it will be good experience in terms of team teaching, though. My CM will be taking over the mornings with Shared Reading, we will both contribute to Guided Reading, and I will continue to teach math and writing. The last week of my student teaching I will be able to pick up some social studies lessons. I am excited to try out these lessons, as I have not really taught any social studies all year.

Week's reflection

It was an exhausting week. While my second week of full-time teaching was easier in terms of classroom management, it was still just as hard in terms of lesson planning and implementation. I learned that there are so many things to think about and juggle throughout the course of the day. I think that is what makes teaching so exhausting, constantly planning, evaluating and coordinating situations and lessons. I finally felt like my place as the teacher clicked into place this week. I was feeling upset on Monday because it still felt like I was struggling to hold my place as the teacher in the room. I was feeling frustrated. But, somehow on Tuesday things started go more smoothly. I think that it helped that I consciously tried to not put extra pressure on myself to try to make things be perfect. I think that, as a result, I was able to relax a little bit more and this transition in my outlook allowed me to be a better teacher.

Understanding your students

I have learned that good lesson planning is the best way to prevent behavior problems. Lessons where I can engage the students in a meaningful way are the ones where I have less acting out. In addition, though, I have realized how important it is to have good time management. I now know the students in my class that will immediately start acting out when they finish their class work. Having enough work or an appropriate amount of time to complete work is essential. I am still learning how to judge how much time to give students for certain tasks.

Time management

I am still struggling to estimate how much time certain activities will take. It never seems like there is enough time in the day or the week to get everything done (especially when you have to fit in testing and test prep!) I would rather have too much planned than run out of lessons for the day, but it causes me to constantly evaluate which lessons to cut or how to extend to give students more time. I do, in a way, like that part of teaching- the fluid and changing nature of the day. It keeps you on your toes to be continually assessing and making decisions about your next steps.

Testing

This week the students seemed to be getting burned out on taking tests. They had to take the Benchmarks this week. They took the Reading Benchmark on Tuesday afternoon. The class as a whole did not score very well. It was surprising and much different than their predictive test and previous benchmarks. The passages that they had to read seemed very long to me. In addition, I think that they were too tired at the very end of the day to really concentrate on it. I think that I will try to give the PSSA tests early in the morning to try to prevent this burnout from happening.

Games

On Friday afternoon I led a math vocabulary game. My CM has electronic buzzers similar to those on a game show that the kids could use during the game. She warned me that the kids go crazy for this game, so I knew that I would have to set expectations. I set my expectations before we started and had to remind them of it once while playing. There was a little bit of confusion, because the kids had very clear ideas about how they thought the rules of the game should go. I let them give me their suggestions, but ultimately made the final decisions and stuck with them. I knew that once we were finished playing the game, I would need to get them to calm down before packing up. I had everyone sit down in their seats and take a moment to quiet down and take a deep breath. I am pleased with the way that it went overall and I might try to use the game again.

Mini math unit

This week I taught a mini-unit on coordinate grids as a supplement to their regular math lessons. They need to know this concept for the PSSA's, but it will not be covered until afterward. My CM helped me a lot with finding resources on the topic. I used an old version of the Investigations curriculum that taught coordinate grids by looking at a neighborhood map on a grid system. I started the unit by introducing the concept through the PSSA Coach book. Then we used the Investigations curriculum to explore the ideas further. We ended with a computer game about ordered pairs. I really enjoyed having this continuity throughout the week and delving further into a particular topic. Previously I have just been teaching mini-lessons in math from the PSSA coach book, so it was a nice change of pace. It has made me excited to teach the upcoming math unit on graphing that I will start in 2 weeks.