My First Week of Student Teaching

I am proud to say that I have survived my first week of student teaching! My cooperating teacher is extremely supportive and positive, and my students are extremely sweet.

Student teaching started a week late because of the polar vortex of 2014. I was initially worried that students would be overly excited on Monday because of this, but luckily, they were on their best behavior.  On Monday morning, I greeted each students by shaking their hand and giving them a paper star that said "Welcome back, ______" that had a pencil attached to it.  After that, several students volunteered to tell me a little something about their classroom, such as the saying, "nothing is more important than relationships," and how they approach their math work (QUISWA: question, information, strategy, work, answer, check). After they came back from specials, we then did snapshot autobiographies! I used this as a way to introduce myself and then allowed students time in class to get started on it.  On the back, I suggested that students write questions for myself and/or comments that they weren't able to share in class.

The rest of the week was a blur! I learned a lot and was able to get to know students more by having recess duty every day.  On Thursday, I taught my first academic lesson.  I found out at the end of the day Wednesday that I was going to teach it, so I only had one night to prepare.  This was a great example of how we're given weeks as students to prepare lessons, but very limited time as student teachers and teachers in general to prepare lessons.  I really like the progression of the lesson that I ended up giving (vocab review, quick quiz, small lesson reminder on circumference, diameter, and radius, small group work, and whole group check over their work and a reminder on translations).  However, this lesson was not appropriate for my kiddos! Although this was supposed to be a review for them, most students had very limited knowledge on the subjects.  For this reason, the small group activity was not appropriate. In addition, these students are really testing me.  For now, they have lost small group work as a privilege because they cannot handle the freedom did not use their skills of being both learners and teachers.

In the upcoming week, my personal goal is to be more of a stickler on disciplining students.  I will be teaching three math lessons this week, and there is a lot to cover in that time!  My goal for my students is for them to be respectful and do their personal best.  Here's to a great 4-day week.  Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!- Kaitlynn