Student Teaching Adventures Part 1 of Many...

Hey Everybody!!!

Officially I've been student teaching for a week and a half...and I'm loving every single minute of it.

Currently, I'm at Holy Family School with 27 little 3rd graders.  It sounds like a lot of students, but they are not all in the classroom at the same time.  In the morning I have about 12, I have 18 (all girls) for Language...then I have all 27 of them for the rest of the day.   They are ALL great children!  I'm not going to dive into my students' lives because I don't want anything personal about them online.  This is also why I don't have any pictures on this entry.  I have a few of my desk, but I'll show them to you all later... if I can find my camera;) 

I was greeted in style on my first day.  I got plenty of cards from the students and a lot of welcome hugs.   Three of my students took a huge poster board and made me a monster card!  It's epic.  On my first day I started right off the bat with guided reading.  I worked with one group of students in a small group doing the Stamina time.   Although I was initially shaking in my boots, I loved having the opportunity to teach right away.  The kids seemed to really like it too.

Over the rest of the week, I picked up spelling, WOD (word of the day), and (my favorite) read aloud.  Those subjects are going pretty well.  My first few days of DOL were pretty rough.  Now I feel more confident with it.  I'm still a little shaky with the WOD worksheet.  Today I took home the sheet to look over.  An in Read Aloud, we are reading "Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger," which is an awesome series! 

A few days ago the children made me some Valentine Day Cards.  They are adorable.  I love having creative children.  They eat up anything art related.  Which is great because I plan on taking full advantage of that! I have quite a few lessons that will incorporate art and music.  (Why today I was singing a Children's Choir song in DOL.)   I'm doing whatever I can to try some new things, but not completely going off kilter from the class structure.  I'm trying to incorporate activities with worksheets and doing activities normally done with worksheets (like Religion) without them. 

Next week I tackle Religion and (most likely) Science.  Not going to lie... can't wait to do more.  I feel so ready to take on everything! (This week.) It seems that my other friends are enjoying their time at their respected schools as well.    We kept on out talking each other last night at wings because we all wanted to share our ideas with each other!  I picked up some awesome ideas and I can't wait to use them in the classroom. 

Today, we finished up our testing for Language and Spelling.  Tomorrow we are going to do the WOD, take a pretest and then play a small vocabulary game.  Maybe, I might change my mind before tomorrow.  I have some time to think about it.   I want the students to do something fun and engaging tomorrow for reading...especially since today they took a bunch of tests.  There needs to be something different.  It will come to me, most likely at 9:52PM again.  (Which will be right in the middle of Burke Mass!)

At times, our class is choatic, but it is always a great place to be.  I feel Chrissy does a great job making the classroom feel like a home to everybody!   I do my best to keep that spirit alive in the classroom through humor, building relationships and much more!

Like I said before, I'm really loving my placement.

E