1 More Semester :)

Is it just me or has this semester absolutely flown by? I cannot believe that I will be Student Teaching starting February 2nd. I am nervous and excited all at the same time. I am just so grateful that I have had the opportunity to be in my mentor teacher's classroom already this fall and that the kids are already familiar with me. 


I think one of the things that I am most looking forward to about having my own classroom is the class Christmas party. I used to always love it as a kid and hope that the kids in my future classroom will love it just as much. I'm looking forward to dressing in our pajamas, making a train in our class, and watching the Polar Express. I cannot wait to put up a Christmas tree in my room and let the kids make ornaments for it. And possibly my most favorite thing, playing wonderful Christmas music during the day. The good thing about the district where I am student teaching is that they do not have any rules about celebrating the holidays. We do have a few students who do not celebrate, but they usually have alternative activities planned for them in the library or with one of the assistants. What sort of things do you do with your class for Christmas? Do you plan the class party or do you have parents that take care of that for you?


Now that my semester is over, I have been subbing quite a bit. I had three jobs this week and already have one for next week. Yesterday was interesting, I spent the morning in a kindergarten class and then spent the afternoon as an aide on the same campus which only has PK and Kinder classes. The kinder class was horrible...I had one of the boys have an accident, 3 that cried, and then 2 boys that were about to punch each other over the play tools in the housekeeping center. However, it was not just because I was a substitute, many teachers told me they are like that all of the time. I already wrote a little about my afternoon on my personal blog, but being an aide was interesting. I was amazed at how many teachers do not use them to their advantage and for their real purpose in my opinion. I know that the PK and Kinder teachers have a lot more prep work because of all of the many crafts that they do, but that does not mean that the aide should always do that. I think it is one thing to have the aide helping students with a craft or doing a part of it that the kids cannot, but making copies and cutting things out might be pushing it a little in my opinion. I went to four classrooms and only one really upset me. She had me do some housekeeping things for her while she took her kids outside to play. I could have taken them outside while she got some things done in the classroom. This same teacher was also complaining because she never has enough time to get everything done, but yet she is gone at 3:30pm as soon as all of her kids are gone. It is not like she has kids at home either, they are older than me! All I know is that I have seen ways that I would not use my aides if I am lucky enough to even have them in my classroom. Sorry for the rant, it just bothered me! If you did not join in on my discussion about aides on my personal blog, feel free to do so here. 


If you are like us here in central Texas, then you only have 4.5 days left until Christmas break!

Love it!

I had to share with you all my new favorite teaching blog, The First Grade Parade.You just have to go and check it out because it is amazing. I came across it while looking for something for my student to do today that was Thanksgiving related for my Clinical Practices class. I ended up using her turkeys that she shared with us and we did a couple of different things with me.

 With one of the turkeys, we did a word family.

This was my example turkey for her that I had done ahead of time. I loved it so much that I added it to my teaching files already. 

With another blank turkey, I let her color it and then our feathers were parts of a story. We are reading a Bailey School Kids book together and we answered the questions on the few chapters that we have read. We had a feather for setting, characters, problem, solution, and one for a prediction. I was so happy with how it turned out and will for sure be doing something similar in my own classroom one day.

What is your favorite Thanksgiving activity to do with your kids?

Is it Thanksgiving yet?

I am so ready for the Thanksgiving holidays and I do not even deal with a class full of students yet. I can only imagine how ready I will be for it next year around this time. I am just ready to be through with all of the ignorant people in my education classes who just chose to become a teacher because they thought it would be easy. Teaching is not for the undedicated, it is a profession that you have to love what you do! It is mostly the secondary people that act that way, maybe it is a high school thing.

I finally got spend some time with my 4th grade friends last week after being super busy the past two weeks. They were just as excited to see me as I was to see them. It was nice too because I finally got to see a science lesson which I had not really seen. The curriculum for Science for the district is CSCOPE which I am not too sure if I like it yet or not. It does not use a textbook which causes the teachers to have to create lots of science packets that include information for them. However, the lab that they did was pretty cool. The past couple of weeks they have been studying all about the Earth's atmosphere and the rock cycle. The lab was set up into about 10 different stations that the students rotated through. They used Ramen noodles as a rock sediment and did all kinds of different things to it. It is an experiment that I will hopefully get to do with a class of mine one day. 

I am getting super excited for student teaching and now know that my first day in the classroom will be Thursday, February 3rd. It can not be here soon enough! I am just anxious for all of the smiles, a-ha moments, tears, and learning that I will get to do during my experience. One thing for sure though is that I could not have asked for a better mentor teacher, she is amazing!

What are y'alls thoughts on lesson plans? Right now in my curriculum class we are having to create a unit plan that involves five lesson plans. My opinion is that in the classroom I am never actually going to be writing lesson plans in this amount of detail! Why do they make us do this now? Wouldn't it be more effective to teach us how to plan for a week or teach us a format to plan for a whole day? Guess that is why I will be getting my masters, so I can teach education classes to future teachers one day!

Where Is The Pause Button?

I promise I am still alive...I just have been so busy this past month. I have had mid terms in my classes, a huge presentation on using portfolios for assessment in my Methods and Management class, lots of subbing, and just life in general. I am so ready for this semester to be over with and have my 3 weeks of class in the spring and then be in the classroom full time. 

I have been going to my mentor teacher's classroom once a week usually. I was only required to do 30 hours of observations for my education classes, but I have already well surpassed that. My thought is that the more time I spend in the classroom this semester, the easier it is going to be for me in the spring because the students will already be familiar with me and I will also be more familiar with my mentor's procedures, rules, and schedule for the class. My mentor also goes out of her way to make me comfortable in the classroom, I even already have my own little desk in there. I know I have already said this before, but my mentor teacher is so amazing and I know that she is truly going to make this experience a wonderful one for me. 

Today I subbed in 5th grade which has really become my favorite grade level to sub for. Friday's are almost a testing day, and today was no different. When I walked into the classroom of the teacher I was subbing for today, I was a little shocked by the exercise balls that had replaced a number of the chairs at the desks. At first I was a little confused about it, but once the students came into the room, it made a lot more sense. My partner teacher for the day came in shortly after the kids did and explained to me the purpose behind the balls. She had read lots of research that had said that allowing ADD/ADHD students as well as Autistic students sitting on exercise balls proves to be an effective way in them doing better at school. It provides them with just enough movement to keep them "busy" so that they are actually focusing on what is being taught and their assignments.  What are your thoughts about this? I am thinking that I might write about this for my Action Research paper that is due at the end of the semester. The teacher told me that she has a bunch of articles on it that I could use. :)

I am in the middle of creating my Unit Plan for my Curriculum and Instruction class. My Unit Plan is going to be on Local, State, and Federal Government which is actually rather easy since I understand all 3 concepts pretty well. One of the 4th grade teachers at the elementary actually told me that all of the 4th grade teachers would like to all use my unit plan that I create because this part of the book will fall during the time right before TAKS testing. Hopefully they will all be quite pleased with it. 

Last but not least, I heard some very exciting news today...one of the 5th grade teachers that I sub for regularly is pregnant and due on May 31st. I stopped in her room this morning just to say hi and her first question to me was when I am done with school. She is wanting to be done around the 9th or so of May and wants me to long term sub for her. It would be for almost a month so I am pretty excited about that possibility. She actually told me today that she told the principal that she wants me to sub for her and then have me take her job because she is not planning on coming back next year. I think my heart skipped a few beats when she told me that. I am excited about the possibility of that, but I am not going to get my hopes up quite yet. May might be a different story though. 

I promise it will not take me 3 weeks next time before I post. Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Friday and I hope that your kiddos are god for you on Monday after being on a sugar high Sunday night after Trick-or-Treating.

Unit Plan and Smart Boards

Hi Again! 

It has been quite a while since I have blogged on here, but I have just been so busy between my classes, observations, volleyball, and subbing.

School is school and my education classes are really starting to wear me out. I am really beginning to feel that my Methods and Management and Curriculum and Instruction classes that I am in, are not actually very helpful. I think that I could be teaching the class right now. She also assigned us a ton of projects that I am not sure how beneficial they are really going to be to us in the long run. We have to complete a unit plan, which I think will actually be helpful because I plan on using mine when I am student teaching. Mine is going to be a social studies unit on Texas Civics and Government. I think it will be interesting and it is also nice because this is the first time in school that the kids have Texas History, so it will be new to them for the most part. Is there anyone who has some resources or great websites about that topic that I should look at? One useful thing I do think that has happened in those classes this semester is that we had a person come from the Smart Board company to come and show us how to use them correctly. I learned a lot of things about it that I had never done before. We also have Smart Board presentations coming up shortly and I have no idea what I want to do mine on. I am hoping to do one that I can also use for my unit plan.

I have been going to my mentor teacher's classroom once a week still and I just love it. The kids are so great and my mentor has really involved me in the lessons. Lately, she has been pulling me my own small group for the intervention time and she even let me teach the math lesson the other day. I'm really hoping that my experience in the spring goes as well as it is with my observations right now.

:)

My observations with my 4th grade friends continues to go amazingly. I know I have said it already, but my mentor teacher is amazing!!! Several of the girls who are in my education classes right now are always talking about how horrible their mentor teacher is. This past week while I was doing observations, my mentor got a phone call from her husband and she needed to go and run by the house to get something. At the time we were doing Learning Zones which is an opportunity for the teachers to work with a small group of 3 students while the rest of the students are taken by an instructional assistant to activities such as library, a lesson with the counselor, and computer time. She left me with the small group while she ran to her house and I worked with them on a language arts skill. I was very nervous, but it ended up going really well. I took it as a big compliment that she already felt comfortable leaving me with her kids alone. 

For my Curriculum and Instruction class we are doing an Action Research Project. We are supposed to be doing research on a classroom management problem that is solvable and that we might actually see in our future classrooms. Do you all have any suggestions for me? My thought was to do something about the student who constantly blurts out in the classroom because I have one of those in the classroom that I will be student teaching with. 

In my Methods and Management class, we are doing these presentations that have to be between 30 and 40 minutes on a certain topic. My topic is on the use of portfolios in the classroom. Do you use portfolios in your classroom? Any good websites that you would like to share with me that you use for portfolios? 

I promise to get into a better groove of blogging on this blog, I am hoping at least twice a week. Hopefully everyone's school year is off to a fabulous start!

My Mentor Teacher is Amazing!!!

I went to observe for the first time this past Wednesday, and I have to admit that I was quite nervous when I walked in. I had talked to my mentor teacher before, but she is one of those people that comes across as rude when you just see her. I cannot begin to even tell you how much I love her and how great she was to me on my first day. She told me that she was really excited about me being with her, but after being in her classroom, I could truly tell how excited she is really is about having me. 

My mentor, Mrs. I, teacher 4th grade inclusion. She only has 17 kids which will be quite nice when I start teaching in the spring. Technically there are 18, but she is pretty sure that the one boy who is ED will never be coming to the classroom. All of the kids were so well behaved while I was there, and they were also very excited when Mrs. I announced to them that I was going to be spending the spring semester with them this year. 

During CAMP (Computer, Art, Music, and PE), Mrs. I and I finally got to chat without 17 kids around us. I asked her about her teaching background because I knew that she had not been doing it her whole life. She actually used to work with an Alternative Certification Program and she was responsible for educating the teachers and she then also observed them out in the field. I think that this will be a huge help for me and she will also know what sort of things to expect of me. I am already looking forward to going back to observe this next week, and I cannot wait for the spring. For a while it seemed like my student teaching experience was not going to be a very good one, but I am 100% sure that it will turn out to be great and I am going to learn so much from Mrs. I!