All Caught Up!

Monday, Nov. 16th

Weston was really wiggly today during a lesson and Beth had him go get a drink of water. The catch, however, was that he had to hop there on one leg and hop back on the other. If he did that he would get 6 fruit loops. He only made it to the water fountain but not back, so he only got 3 fruit loops. It was basically just a way of getting some of his energy out since he was being so restless.

Beth told me to go garage saleing in May and June because a lot of retiring teachers have their garage sales then and sell all their teaching supplies and it made me realize how many things I've sold in garage sales or let my friends sell without realizing they are valuable to me! Well, I won't make that mistake ever again. Also, when we all graduate I am taking every one's storage units they use in their apartments and dorms that they aren't taking with them!!

Christine, the middle school band director was saying that some of her girls want to drop out of band so they can be in study hall and talk to boys. I was in awe.... the only good boys out there are all in music anyway!

So, i don't know if nay of you watch Glee, but we have a Rachel and a Quinn in our school. Quinn, who's real name is Brianna, is this blonde 4th grader that from what I've seen is pretty popular and kind of mean to some of the other girls. Rachel, who's real name is Cassidy, is the one that was crying in class the other day because she didn't get the lead in the Christmas musical. Well, she has a really good voice, but also a really big head. The two of them were arguing in class and it reminded me SO much of Glee.

Wednesday, Nov. 18th

In my classes, my professors always say when you use manipulatives in class you have to give the students time to play with them first or else they can't concentrate on the lesson. Well, I noticed that Weston always tries to write and erase things on the dry erase board when Beth is doing one-on-one instruction with him and he always plays with manipulatives, so when I taught Math to Weston today I made sure I gave him the dry erase board, marker, and eraser and about 5 minutes to just draw and erase all over the board to his little heart's extent. He was actually really good about not fidgeting with it later in the lesson. I guess professors are right occasionally.

Katrina used the phrase "blossom of fun" today to describe her class to sub.

Weston doesn't like reading a whole lot, but he didn't have anything to do after a lesson and we told him he could read or practice his handwriting. He was just sitting at his desk with a book on it, but not open. I went over and told him I would read with him. He would read a page then I would read a page. I told him I needed to know he was following along when i read, so he was going to point to the words as I read them. Well we went that way for a few pages, but after a while he started reading all the pages and I just let him. I was so touched that he was that into the book that he didn't even notice that he had been reading for a long time and we weren't trading off anymore. When he got the end of the book he finally realized and said "Hey, you tricked me!" then made me finish the last page.

I also taught Izzy and Katrina math today and we didn't get finish the lesson. They had a crafts thing to go to so they had to leave earlier than normal, plus they were struggling pretty bad with the lesson. It was on telling time and they kept getting the minute and hour hands mixed up. Also when i would say "The time is 4:05 what is 4? Minutes or hours? What is five? Minutes or hours?" They would almost always get those mixed up. I explained that when you say time like "4 oh 5" the first number you say is always the hours and the last number you say is always the minutes and they got better at that after a while. However, after they got a hold of that the lesson was to teach them how to say time like "25 minutes after 4." Then they got really confused because they had just been told to say hours first and now they were being told the opposite, so they kept saying "5 past 25." It was really kind of frustrating, but something I realized was that I wasn't frustrated with Izzy and Katrina, i was frustrated with myself. I realized how much more patient I am than I used to be. I was frustrated with myself for not being able to communicate to them how to tell time in a way they could understand, whereas a year ago i probably would have been frustrated with them for not understanding what i was trying to teach them.

The sub today was really nice. She has a degree in Elementary ed. but didn't get a job out of college so she's subbing for the time being. Anyway, when she was in her student teaching her teacher;s husband got cancer and was gone a lot, so she had to work with 50 subs during her student teaching. She was saying how sometimes they would make her do everything and sometimes they wouldn't let her do anything, so she wanted to be very clear with me that if I was uncomfortable doing something she wasn't going to make me do it, but if I really wanted to do something just to tell her and I could. I was already teaching 1st grade and 4th grade math so that was really enough for me, but she offered for me to teach 3rd grade reading, so i decided to go for it. Well, it went okay, except for Jase and Justin need to work on their comprehension. Also, Jase was just SO full of stories. We were reading a story from the text book about simple machines and every time we would turn the page he would be "Miss Crane, there's a picture of a skateboard on this page, did you know i was at the skate park yesterday, there are wheels on a skateboard and wheels are a simple machine, but there was this guy and he was on his skateboard on a ramp, ramps are simple machines too..." It was too funny. He did it for almost every page, but he would always be sure to relate it to the text so he wouldn't get in trouble for talking, but so he could also tell me his story.

Monday, Nov. 23rd

Today I taught my own math lessons. i was supposed to teach reading too, but Beth had forgotten that they had mini lessons during that time, so I'm doing reading on Wednesday. Math went really well though. The story problem lesson plan I did was a little to easy for them, but it was good review and they thought it was fun. I was really happy with Katrina during the +9 math facts memorization lesson pan because she caught on really quickly that all you do is subtract 1 and add 10, so like with 9+3=12 you subtract 1 from 3 to get 2 then it's 12 because you add 10. She got 100% on the assessment at the end. I was so proud of her.

Not in Beth's class, but in a lot of the others they were doing "Dear Santa" letters today. The 1st grade teacher brought Weston's over to show us because for one thing, he has horrible handwriting and she wasn't 100% sure what it said, but also because on one side he had written "Dear Santa, I want Ben 10 toys", but on the other side he had written "Dear Santa, I want my family to not hate me and I want to be respected." It was the saddest thing to hear, because I know he doesn't have the best home life, but at the same time it was so sweet and insightful because it was so deep and he used such big words for a first grader.