Student Teaching Week 7 - Valley Elementary

On Monday of this week was my first ISE day of the school year. They had meetings on Writing, TechSteps, and a Faculty Senate meeting at the end of the day. It was interesting for me to be a part of the whole process because I was not just looked at as a student teacher, but I had a voice and could participate in the discussions. When the students returned on Tuesday, we all expected them to be crazy, but much to our surprise they were excited to be back. They all did a wonderful job at remembering the daily classroom routine.

This week, I took over math and one of the small groups during reading. I also did the read alouds before we broke into small groups. The students act comfortable around me, and about half of them remembered my name from last week. I took the free time in this week to collect a lot of observations and re-access each students' letter recognition to gain more baseline data. A lot of the students' stayed in their same range, with the exception of a few students that increased. I definitely want to stick with my idea of using kinesthetic activities to practice with letters. Although I had hoped to have everything ready to begin implementing my plan next week, it is just not possible yet. I have a lot of good ideas, and have my research brief finished, but I need to write out a detailed plan for the remaining weeks of my placement before I feel comfortable enough to begin. Thankfully, I have a lot of time to conduct the activities with the students, and I am able to pull the most at-risk students for one-on-one practice during their playtime in the morning.

Next week, I am going to start full-time teaching from a mixture of Mrs. Sausen's lessons as well as my lessons. I am looking forward to being more involved in the classroom, and not just be observing or walking around during whole group activities.