Almost Time

Tomorrow is the big day when my student teaching begins. I am nervous, but so excited all at the same time. I am lucky since I already know all of the kids and also am familiar with the classroom. I cannot imagine walking in for the first day and not knowing anything about the class, students, or mentor. I am finishing my last research paper right now for my classes and then just have to submit it through email.

I am hoping to blog at least 2 or 3 times a week about student teaching, but we will see. I have a feeling that might be a little more difficult as I get into the full teach portion of it. 

I am also having a giveaway over on my personal blog that I think a lot of my teacher friends would really enjoy!

Teacher Talk Thursday

Today I am linking up with Abby over at Snyder Stories for Teacher Talk Thursday.

The theme for the week is organization tips. Even though I do not have my own classroom just quite yet, there are some things that I cannot wait to do in my first classroom. 

1. I have been collecting books for my classroom for quite some time now. I have over 250 already that I have picked up at garage sales, Half-Price Books, Scholastic book orders, and that I have been given from teachers. One thing that I have doing as I have gotten them is to label them all with my name on the inside with a sticker and then I have also labeled them for AR on the front so students will know which books they can take a test on. I cannot wait to get my own classroom so I can organize my classroom library.

2. I am a huge fan of using community supplies instead of having each student keep their own box of stuff in their desk. I plan on having some plastic drawers that I can have one drawer for each different supply such as glue, markers, crayons, index cards, etc. Students would keep their own scissors though of course. 

3. A good planner or desk calendar. I am already on the lookout for both for the fall. I cannot function or feel organized without a good planner. I promise to take a picture of my planner view for a week one of these days. I refer to it as word vomit a lot of the time because I have so much written in it. 

4. Color coordination for each subject for the students and teacher. A tub for each subject that matches student folders will really help everyone keep everything in order. 

I cannot wait to read everyone's organization tips and hope that I can use some of them in my first classroom!

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Tonight was the mentor and student teacher orientation meeting at my university. I rode over there with Mrs. I and we were a little late since she had late duty. Boy am I glad that we were because we had to sit in the back. The presenter who came from Region 20 was horrible. I felt really bad that all of the mentors had to sit through it. I wish I would have kept tallys of how many times the speaker said I, my, or me. It was all she talked about. Even though the actual meeting was not so great, we did have a great conversation about my expectations for student teaching on the way over there. I cannot wait to get started now next Wednesday...I think it is going to be just amazing! 

I am hoping to blog at least twice a week about the experience and also share some of the things that I create for it with you all. Can't say it will always happen, but I will try my best. 

Did I mention that my 4th grade friends have their writing TAKS test already in 22 days?!?!?! I'm a little nervous about that!

Countdown

The countdown has officially started...12 days until my Student Teaching officially begins!

I am taking my PPR test this coming Tuesday and am excited to get that out of the way. I am feeling pretty good about it right now, I passed the practice test that we took in class on the first day this semester and that was before I had done any prep for it. 

For student teaching, we were also given the task of creating a lesson plan template for us to use. I finished mine this evening and am pretty pleased with it. What do you think? Is there anything you think that I should add? Click the link to see it.

I also thought that since I am going to start a new chapter in my life, I felt that the blog needed a new look too! Be on the lookout for a new look very soon!

Almost Time

It is almost time for me to begin my 12 weeks of Student Teaching and I could not be more excited about it. I am not excited about the whole dressing up thing every day though. February 2nd is so close now! I have 3 weeks of class that begins this coming Wednesday that I must attend on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It is basically two classes...one is a review for my PPR test that I take on the 25th and then the other one is called The Learner and it is about working with and planning for diverse students. I have a feeling that is going to be really helpful for me since I am going to be in an inclusion classroom. 

This past week school started back here in my town, but they already got out early today and have no school tomorrow because of the county stock show. Only in Texas! I did sub though Monday-Wednesday which I think was a really great experience for me. On Monday I was in 4th grade and the kids were so jacked up. I am just glad that I got to experience that before having my own classroom. At least I will know what to expect next year when they come back from Christmas break! Tuesday I subbed at the middle school for one of the coaches and boy was that interesting. She had 2 athletics classes, 2 6th grade pre-athletics classes, and then a double blocked English class that she co-teaches. Sometimes I think I can do middle school but then I think I am crazy if I ever do that full time. Guess we will see when the job search begins. Then yesterday I did a half day in kindergarten and they were horrible. I really think that I will never teach kindergarten. I do not know how some of you do that every day! 

I promise I will try to update at least once a week when I start student teaching but who knows. I am so excited about it and excited to share about it too. Any tips for my first week?

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!