Catching up still

Monday Nov 2nd

Well, I've been trying to build rapport with more people and the next staff member I wanted to focus on was Mrs. Ross, the special ed aide. I've been sure to greet her and talk to her whenever I can. Beth calls her grandma, because she's an older lady and she takes care of everyone as if she's their grandma. She's really a nice lady. She's rarely in our class though so I'm not sure what she actually does int he school.


Jacob has been saying hi and bye to me every time he sees me and it's adorable. He works on a puzzle everyday and I usually sit at the table with the puzzle, so he always shows me how far he's gotten. It's a 500 piece puzzle and he's a fourth grader and he's doing better at it than I would!

I've also been trying to build rapport with Katrina. I've been sure greet her every time I see her and to talk to her whenever I get a chance. Her biggest problem in class is talk outs and I've noticed that when I engage her in a conversation before class starts she has less talk outs during class. I really think that she just needs some socializing time before she has to work sot hat she can get whatever is on her mind out and then she doesn't feel the need to talk during work time.

I've also been trying to talk to Izzie a lot more. I'm doing a lot of assessments with her, so I've been trying to talk to her in between assessments and such, like while I'm writing I'll ask her about her dogs or something. She's really a good girl. She's really cooperative and eager to learn. She never complains about anything and she just has such a positive attitude.

In class, Beth read 'The Mysterious Pumpkin Patch' to them and I thought it was a really cute book for Halloween, so I wanted to note it so I can remember.

Weston's math lesson has been using apples as examples for things a lot, so Beth brought an apple into class so he could snack and use the seeds for manipulative's. Well, apparently he doesn't like apples much, but I just thought it was so funny when he bit into it and asked Beth, "Where did you get a soakin' wet apple?" It was juicy and he was appalled by it!

I talked to my teacher about Katrina's finger counting and she said that the next step should be manipulative's, but i don't think she understands. Katrina is in fourth grade, in her gen ed class she is learning multiplication. She understands the concept of addition and subtraction, she just doesn't have them memorized, so it's easiest to count fingers for her. She doesn't need just another way of wasting time to figure it out, she needs to memorize them so that math will be easier for her. I talked to Beth and she agrees with me, but I don't know how to tell my professor that she's wrong and that I'm not going to work with her on manipulative's.

Wednesday Nov 4th

Beth was gone today so we had a sub. Beth had warned me that the sub was the old retired gym teacher from Paw Paw and that at the end of her time being the gym teacher, she had burnt a lot of bridges. She had been rude the students and always made it very obvious that she didn't want to be there. In the morning, we both read over Beth's instructions for us and the first thing we do, which I knew from being in Beth's class so long was go into the students' gen ed classes and get their take home folders. Well the sub was engaged in a conversation and forgot so i went on over and got them from the fourth graders, but the third grade teacher brought them to us herself and gave me a look when the sub said something to her, so I was expecting not to have a very good day with the sub. Well, she wasn't all that bad. She was, however, on her cell phone all day. She was texting and even calling people during class. When i was teaching my writing lesson, she was over in the corner gabbing away. Also, I thought some of the times that she yelled at the kids were inappropriate. The sub and I were talking and Izzie walked up and asked a question and the sub snapped on her for interrupting. I felt so bad for Izzie and I just keep thinking that if you're going to teach manners, you should model them yourself.

Well, when the students finished one of their lessons I told them they could play games. The way we play games in their class is that they have to read a sight word correctly before they are allowed to roll the dice and move. Some of the students were playing candy land and some were playing trouble. Jacob was one of the ones playing trouble and at one point I heard him say to Katrina "at least you didn't get minus 6" after she rolled the dice, then she asked "there's a minus 6?" and he says "yea, I only saw it once though...it hides!" I was cracking up!

I gave Izzie a comprehension assessment and I accidentally gave her the master copy, so all of the answers were bolded. I don't think she noticed though because she still got a couple wrong.

One of the women int he clinicals office at NIU came into my class to do my check up. I knew they would come one of the days Beth would be gone too. I was literally driving to school in the morning thinking how they were going to show up today of all days. Well, she did and she came in the middle of my writing lesson plan. Which, by the way, went really well and it's a good thing since she came into the class in the middle of it. Well, she just came and introduced herself and waited for me to finish then just said how it looked like I was having a good time and doing a good job and then left.

While she was there though, I had finished up my lesson plan and read each of the students writing and if it was good I told them to staple it, turn it in, and go read their books. Well, just last week we had written a similar essay about Halloween costumes instead of being thankful on thanksgiving and those we had stapled on the bulletin board, so when i said staple this, Weston thought I meant to the bulletin board. While I was talking to the woman from NIU, they all came to me freaking out because they didn't know where to put their essays. It was OK though, I acknowledged that I should have explained batter and the sub finally took some incentive and went out and took Weston's off the bulletin board and told them all where to out their essays.

It did make me feel good that they were all treating me like the teacher and not as much the sub. The would all ask me what was next or if they could have a treat or whatever. I got to do a lot since the sub kept getting distracted. It also helped me figure out a lot about the classroom, like how things run and where things are. It helped to have to figure it out on my own rather than just being told, now I'll be able to remember more.

Beth is friends with the middle school band director, Christine, and I've been sitting with them in the teacher lounge at lunch everyday. Christine has been talking about her boyfriend, Kyle, for the past 3 weeks and it took me this long to realize that I know him. He's the graduate student assistant for the marching band, which I was in last year and which Ahren is still in now.

I also thought of a good idea in my class for the job charts for the kids. It's like a spinner and on the middle circle you have each students name and on the outer circle all of the jobs. This way you can just spin the inner circle to line them up with a different job each day.