My computer has not been working for a while, so I apologize for my lack of blog updates. I've actually been slowly writing this for a week and just haven't published it yet, but I'm going to publish it this time whether it's completely up to date or not
MONDAY OCT 26th
Well, Monday went smooth. I taught math and it went really well. Katrina tried to stall the whole time. She would ask me random questions, like "how old are you?" and "how long have you been teaching?" and she would tell me I'm such a good teacher. It would have meant a lot more to me if I hadn't known she was only trying to stall from the lesson.
If I had written this immediately after school I would have had a lot to say, but since it's almost a week later, I don't really remember what I was going to say. I did write down some of the things that happened though.
The students were reading something about treasure, so Beth asked where some good places to hide treasure would be and one of the boys yelled out, really excited, "In a book!" Beth was a little surprised by this answer, but then she thought of a dollar bill and asked him what kind of treasure would be small enough to fit in a book. He looked at her confused for a minute and then yelled "Oh, a marble!" I had to laugh.
Also, Beth has a really good idea that I noted that I want to remember. When she does little quizzes and reads them out loud, she gives each student a cookie sheet with the magnetic letters a, b, c, and d on them and the students hold their cookie sheets so no one else can see then put their answer on it and show it to her. Cute idea!
Beth asked Justina and Jase what their favorite games were. Jase answered Candy Land and Justin said he couldn't think of one. Jase then said that Justin's favorite was beating up his brother. Beth said that that wasn't a game and Justin told her "no, it's an activity!"
Also, I don't know if I already mentioned, but I made a big turkey out of construction paper for Beth's bulletin board, but none of the students ever know what it is. They always call it a chicken. This is not a reflection of my work, however, because it really does look like a turkey. Justin caleld it a chicken though and Beth looked at him funny, so he knew he called it the wrong thing, but then he called it a roster. Again, not a reflection on my craft abilities.
Paw Paw has this program called Bulldog Buddies and high school students come to the elem school to help students who need tutoring. One boy comes to out class because his brothers are in it. While he was there Monday, Justin hit his finger on the guy's elbow and said "I cracked my finger on his tricep." Then Jase, whose brother is a marine, asked the guy if he could move his "these" and put his hands on his pecs. Beth told him they're called pecs, because you could tell Justin and Jase only knew to call them boobs or something like that and didn't want to say it in front of us. But then when the guy said no, he couldn't move his pecs on their own, Jase said "My brother can! He's a marine, he's got skills!"
WEDNESDAY OCT 28th
On Wednesday, we were writing essays about what we were going to be for Halloween. Jacob is a fourth grader, who has been in Beth's class for four years. Apparently, e has been a ninja every year. He wanted to write his essay about Ninja's and at first Beth was saying no, but then he almost cried so she just went ahead and let him.
Jacob is pretty adorable. He says Hi to me everytime he sees me, like literally, we'll have been in the same room already for an hour but he'll turn and see me or walk past me and say "hi" again. He's too cute.
When they were writing about their halloween costumes, Beth was doing her example and hers was a bumblebee. She did this lesson in two different classes and everytime the boys would all say "from transformers?" when she said she was going to be a bumblebee. Oh, boys.... The way she was doing the writing lesson was by having the topic on the top, Bumblebee, then lines coming off of it for the 3 subtopics. Beth had decided to help Weston, the only 1st grader with four 4th graders, by writing his subtopics on the board as an example for him. Well, Weston was going to be a zombie, so Beth's example ended up looking like this :
Bumblebee- Scary, Bloody, Eat People
Also, during our talk about Weston being a zombie, one of the students, i can't remember which one said, "Weston eats people, he's a carnival." Hahaha
Justin was going to Optimus Prime and their 3 subtopics had to be reasons why they want to be that for halloween. One of Justin's reasons was because Optimus can fly. Then for each subtopic they had to have 3 sentence topics. Justin couldn't think of anything so we asked him where he would fly to. It took him a while, but then he decided on Michigan. Michigan? Of all the places...
I saw this good idea for skip counting. When I was doing the math lesson plan I realized that Izzie and Katrina can skip count from 0 to 20 by 2's but they can't go past 20 and they can't start at any random number and go from there. The idea I saw was a maze with numbers in it and if you skip count by 2's or whatever number you want to make the maze with, then you can get tot he end. so there's a fork in the maze and you're on 2 and you can choose 3 or 4, you would choose 4 then 6 then 8 and so on. I might make one for them and have it start at 20 and count by 2's.
Another idea that I saw, this one in Beth's class is she has this big box that she cut two sides out of and everytime they take a test a new student gets to take it witht he box around them. It prevents from cheating and the kids think it's really cool.
So, Katrina is the one I've been talking about that gets frustrated so easily and tries to stall from everything. Well, today I was working with Izzie and Beth was working with Katrina. Katrina was working with time. She had a big manipulative clock in front of her and Beth would put it on a time and ask her what time then would ask what time half an hour ago. Well Katrina was getting frustrated so she just started giving the wrong answers on purpose and would give Beth this little smirk. Beth got ffrustrated with her and asked me to switch. What Katrina was doing was saying it was 9:60 instead of 9 o'clock. The big clock she was looking at had 1-12 written big and then 5-60 counting by fives smaller above the 1-12. Well, Katrina knew to say 6 o'clock, but she was being a smart alick and just reading the numbers because the back a half hour part was frustrating her. After a while she started just not being cooperative at all. It was really frustrating, but it made me realize how much I am going to have to work on my patience. Really, I think all she needed was a break. She had been working on clocks for a long time and although she does need the practice because shes not getting the hang of it, she's not going to get it if she gets in a mood like that. I think a break would have been the best for everyone.
Also, I met the Speech Language Pathologist and she was really nice. Beth introduced me to her though as Shelley and Jase heard her and then he gave us this little smirk and calle dme Shelley. We laughed, but then Beth told him I'm still his teacher and he needs to call me Ms. Crane.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
We're not Cavemen!
Well, I didn't do the math lesson today, that was a relief! I'm doing it Monday and we went over everything so I'll be ready. I feel much more confident now!
I realized that I may not have made the best impression on some of the people in the school because I didn't actually introduce myself to anyone that I worked with other than Beth on the first day. Beth did introduce me to the Principle, but I didn't really talk to him or thank him for letting me come into his school or anything. I decided I should probably try to make a better impression, so I started with the front office. The first day I had gone in and said I was Mrs. Foose's student teacher and someone walked me over to her room, but I didn't introduce myself to anyone or really talk to anyone, so Wednesday morning I went back in and talked to them a bit and introduced myself. I asked them if I need to sign in with them every morning and they said no, but still just come check in with them, so I'll make a point every morning to walk in and ask how they're doing. Next time, I think I'll work on teacher's lounge socializing. haha
The teacher's lounge is actually an interesting place. Apparently, the elementary teacher's lunch is the best to attend. I may have to start having a special "teacher's lounge edition" each time.
This time, my student, Izzie, whom I'm doing my reading and writing assessments with, wasn't there so I didn't get anything done for that. Katrina, who I am doing my math assessment and classroom management project with was there so I observed her and got a lot figured out.
Other than that, as far as work for my classes goes, I didn't do a whole lot, but I worked with some students on reading and writing things. That was fun. We pushed into a third grade classroom to help one of our students who had been absent a few days, and one of the kids in that class had a little crush on me. It was cute. He was looking for something in the classroom and couldn't find it and I saw it so I pointed it out to him. After that he kept looking over at me and I when I would look back he would blush and smile. :) It was too cute.
I have a few quotes of the day from my kids because they made me laugh:
Katrina is an avoider. She doesn't like to do work and gets frustrated easily with hard work. She tends to drag things out to waste time and will always take forever to answer a question whether she knows the answer or not. There were ten pennies in front of her and we asked her how many there were. We had been working on ten pennies going into a dime so she knew there were ten pennies in front of her, but she made a big show of waving her finger over them and counting out loud really fast to twelve before she finally said "ten." It was obvious she knew the answer and she could have just said "ten" but she had to waste time making a big show of counting them. Anyway, my actual quote of the day was when she had a bunch of random numbers in front of her and she had to put them in order from lowest to highest. She took her sweet time and kept getting them wrong on purpose then correcting herself. But when she got to the last number she said "And then, of course, the great, the only.......88." She said it so dramatically I laughed out loud, which I shouldn't have done. Oh well, it was funny.
My second quote of the day was from Jon. We were reading about the American flag and how it's changed over the years and Beth asked the students how we know what the flag looked like before now and Jon says "because we have internet." Now, this quote is funny enough in itself, because I can just imagine him thinking that before we had internet we didn't know anything and then all of a sudden internet was invented and we had all this knowledge that just came from the internet. It was even funnier, however, when Beth turned and asked what he said and he says to her "We're not cavemen! We have technology!" He sounded to triumphant and proud!
Also, the two boys we have at the end of the day are Jase and Justin, who I think are hilarious together, so you'll probably be hearing stories about them eventually.
I realized that I may not have made the best impression on some of the people in the school because I didn't actually introduce myself to anyone that I worked with other than Beth on the first day. Beth did introduce me to the Principle, but I didn't really talk to him or thank him for letting me come into his school or anything. I decided I should probably try to make a better impression, so I started with the front office. The first day I had gone in and said I was Mrs. Foose's student teacher and someone walked me over to her room, but I didn't introduce myself to anyone or really talk to anyone, so Wednesday morning I went back in and talked to them a bit and introduced myself. I asked them if I need to sign in with them every morning and they said no, but still just come check in with them, so I'll make a point every morning to walk in and ask how they're doing. Next time, I think I'll work on teacher's lounge socializing. haha
The teacher's lounge is actually an interesting place. Apparently, the elementary teacher's lunch is the best to attend. I may have to start having a special "teacher's lounge edition" each time.
This time, my student, Izzie, whom I'm doing my reading and writing assessments with, wasn't there so I didn't get anything done for that. Katrina, who I am doing my math assessment and classroom management project with was there so I observed her and got a lot figured out.
Other than that, as far as work for my classes goes, I didn't do a whole lot, but I worked with some students on reading and writing things. That was fun. We pushed into a third grade classroom to help one of our students who had been absent a few days, and one of the kids in that class had a little crush on me. It was cute. He was looking for something in the classroom and couldn't find it and I saw it so I pointed it out to him. After that he kept looking over at me and I when I would look back he would blush and smile. :) It was too cute.
I have a few quotes of the day from my kids because they made me laugh:
Katrina is an avoider. She doesn't like to do work and gets frustrated easily with hard work. She tends to drag things out to waste time and will always take forever to answer a question whether she knows the answer or not. There were ten pennies in front of her and we asked her how many there were. We had been working on ten pennies going into a dime so she knew there were ten pennies in front of her, but she made a big show of waving her finger over them and counting out loud really fast to twelve before she finally said "ten." It was obvious she knew the answer and she could have just said "ten" but she had to waste time making a big show of counting them. Anyway, my actual quote of the day was when she had a bunch of random numbers in front of her and she had to put them in order from lowest to highest. She took her sweet time and kept getting them wrong on purpose then correcting herself. But when she got to the last number she said "And then, of course, the great, the only.......88." She said it so dramatically I laughed out loud, which I shouldn't have done. Oh well, it was funny.
My second quote of the day was from Jon. We were reading about the American flag and how it's changed over the years and Beth asked the students how we know what the flag looked like before now and Jon says "because we have internet." Now, this quote is funny enough in itself, because I can just imagine him thinking that before we had internet we didn't know anything and then all of a sudden internet was invented and we had all this knowledge that just came from the internet. It was even funnier, however, when Beth turned and asked what he said and he says to her "We're not cavemen! We have technology!" He sounded to triumphant and proud!
Also, the two boys we have at the end of the day are Jase and Justin, who I think are hilarious together, so you'll probably be hearing stories about them eventually.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Day 1!
Well, my first day is officially over....
I got a little confused driving to the school since it's in the middle of nowhere! You would think that after 8 years in Illinois I would be used to driving through corn fields, but I don't think it will ever happen.
The real shock, however, was how truly tiny the school was. I shouldn't have been surprised. I was expecting it after all, but my cooperating teacher, Beth, had told me to park in the paved lot, because the high schoolers park in the gravel lot. Well, when I got there the gravel lot looked like it could fit maybe 10 cars and then there was the paved lot right in the front of the school. I saw another paved lot around the back and was convinced that was where I had to park. The paved lot in front was the same size as the paved lot in front of the high school I graduated from, and only principals and important people parked there. Well, come to find out, that paved lot is where all the teachers and faculty park. Wow...
Despite the school being tiny, I got lost on my way to the office. In my defense, it's not right in front of your face when you walk in like it is in normal schools.
Anyway, basically as soon as I got there another teacher came over and started checking out my butt...
Yea, she thought I had a rip in my pants, but it turned out just to be my scarf lying on a strange spot.... scared the crap out of me though. As I walked away, a group of about 5 teachers stayed behind to laugh about what a field day the students would have had with that one.... I didn't find it so funny, but I was very relieved.
In Beth's classroom she only has 4 students in the morning and 2 in the afternoon at a time. The students were adorable. They are in 4th and 3rd grades. Mostly they have LD.
I did find out that Beth went to NIU and was in Alpha Phi Omega, which was cool. We had a lot to talk about and even knew some common people. That was nice and helped me to feel more comfortable.
I got a lot done in my first day. I did my writing and math assessments to start my projects for a few classes, I identified the students that I'll be working with for all of my projects, and I figured out which student and what problem behavior to use for my class management project.
Beth also let me do some of the assessments she does every day with her students so that I could get some practice.
The best part: I made a huge construction paper turkey! haha Apparently, Beth is not artsy, but I love doing crafts so she asked me to make her thanksgiving bulletin board. It was cute!
Seriously, the best part was that she gave me her lesson plan for math on Wednesday and told me to look over it because I'm going to be teaching it! I'm really excited and I'm sure Ahren is too! He's always my pretend student when I need one....what a good boyfriend!
The only thing that didn't go so well today was that I'm afraid one of the students hates me.
She's the girl I'm doing my math assessment with and I don't think she likes math very much. I did some addition flash cards with her. She just had to answer the problem within 3 seconds. It was supposed to be a way of assessing her math memorization. Well, she doesn't have her math memorized at all. She was counting on her fingers for the simplest problems and when they were small numbers she could count fast enough but for the bigger numbers she would just give up because counting would take too long and she didn't have any of them memorized. She got really frustrated and then had to go straight into other math work without much of a break so she was just upset, slouching, and putting her head down the rest of the period and I felt so bad. I just hated that my first day in the classroom I couldn't get to know them better and I had to go straight to assessing them.
Other than that my day was fantastic! Although, I did forget my lunch box in her fridge....
I got a little confused driving to the school since it's in the middle of nowhere! You would think that after 8 years in Illinois I would be used to driving through corn fields, but I don't think it will ever happen.
The real shock, however, was how truly tiny the school was. I shouldn't have been surprised. I was expecting it after all, but my cooperating teacher, Beth, had told me to park in the paved lot, because the high schoolers park in the gravel lot. Well, when I got there the gravel lot looked like it could fit maybe 10 cars and then there was the paved lot right in the front of the school. I saw another paved lot around the back and was convinced that was where I had to park. The paved lot in front was the same size as the paved lot in front of the high school I graduated from, and only principals and important people parked there. Well, come to find out, that paved lot is where all the teachers and faculty park. Wow...
Despite the school being tiny, I got lost on my way to the office. In my defense, it's not right in front of your face when you walk in like it is in normal schools.
Anyway, basically as soon as I got there another teacher came over and started checking out my butt...
Yea, she thought I had a rip in my pants, but it turned out just to be my scarf lying on a strange spot.... scared the crap out of me though. As I walked away, a group of about 5 teachers stayed behind to laugh about what a field day the students would have had with that one.... I didn't find it so funny, but I was very relieved.
In Beth's classroom she only has 4 students in the morning and 2 in the afternoon at a time. The students were adorable. They are in 4th and 3rd grades. Mostly they have LD.
I did find out that Beth went to NIU and was in Alpha Phi Omega, which was cool. We had a lot to talk about and even knew some common people. That was nice and helped me to feel more comfortable.
I got a lot done in my first day. I did my writing and math assessments to start my projects for a few classes, I identified the students that I'll be working with for all of my projects, and I figured out which student and what problem behavior to use for my class management project.
Beth also let me do some of the assessments she does every day with her students so that I could get some practice.
The best part: I made a huge construction paper turkey! haha Apparently, Beth is not artsy, but I love doing crafts so she asked me to make her thanksgiving bulletin board. It was cute!
Seriously, the best part was that she gave me her lesson plan for math on Wednesday and told me to look over it because I'm going to be teaching it! I'm really excited and I'm sure Ahren is too! He's always my pretend student when I need one....what a good boyfriend!
The only thing that didn't go so well today was that I'm afraid one of the students hates me.
She's the girl I'm doing my math assessment with and I don't think she likes math very much. I did some addition flash cards with her. She just had to answer the problem within 3 seconds. It was supposed to be a way of assessing her math memorization. Well, she doesn't have her math memorized at all. She was counting on her fingers for the simplest problems and when they were small numbers she could count fast enough but for the bigger numbers she would just give up because counting would take too long and she didn't have any of them memorized. She got really frustrated and then had to go straight into other math work without much of a break so she was just upset, slouching, and putting her head down the rest of the period and I felt so bad. I just hated that my first day in the classroom I couldn't get to know them better and I had to go straight to assessing them.
Other than that my day was fantastic! Although, I did forget my lunch box in her fridge....
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Count Down: 1 Day!
Tomorrow is the big day! Soon I will be going grocery shopping with my step mom to get my lunch box food and then I will be picking out my clothes for my first day!!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Count Down:2 Days
In 2 Days I will be a student teacher!
I wanted to start this blog for multiple reasons:
My roommate, Bria, who has been my best friend since seventh grade, and I had blogs our junior year of high school. We forgot about them until very recently and when we remembered them we laughed and laughed and laughed at ourselves for hours. So, my first reason for writing this blog: so that four years from now I can laugh at myself.
I have a lot of family who are or were teachers, so my second reason: so that they can laugh at me too! No, actually I would really appreciate feedback, stories, constructive criticism, advice, or whatever you have for me!
My last reason for writing this blog is just so that I can always look back, remember, and learn.
So, two more days until I am officially a student teacher! I'm pretty sure I'm ready. I've got my placement, I've talked to my cooperating teacher, I have all of my tools ready for the assignments I have to do in the school, and I've bought my lunch box.
My placement is at Paw Paw Elementary School in Paw Paw, Illinois. It's about a 35 minute drive from DeKalb so it's not too bad. My cooperating teacher, Beth Foose, has told me that I couldn't have been placed in her class during a better year because she only has four students in the morning and two in the afternoon. I forgot to ask what grades and disabilities....oops.... I have three classes at NIU that I have assignments from to do while I am in the school. It makes me nervous how much work we have to do in the short time that we are in the school, but my professors this semester have been really understanding and flexible. Now, as far as my lunch box goes, being a poor college student and soon-to-be poor special ed teacher, although I could afford the lunch box, my parents are the ones paying for the food that goes in it, which I find kind of sad since I don't even live with them at the moment. I took a special trip home to get this lunch box food!
Over the summer, I was having a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. For a while, I was so afraid of going into an elementary school and being a teacher that I considered changing my major.
Changing my major at this point would have meant not graduating in four years, so I was willing to put my life on hold just to avoid going into a school and finding out I'm a horrible teacher. I wanted to change my major to psychology, so I enrolled in a psychology class to see how I would like it....I HATE it! I have never been more sure of the fact that I am meant to be a teacher than I am right now. The closer I get to my first day, the more my excitement outweighs my nervousness.
I wanted to start this blog for multiple reasons:
My roommate, Bria, who has been my best friend since seventh grade, and I had blogs our junior year of high school. We forgot about them until very recently and when we remembered them we laughed and laughed and laughed at ourselves for hours. So, my first reason for writing this blog: so that four years from now I can laugh at myself.
I have a lot of family who are or were teachers, so my second reason: so that they can laugh at me too! No, actually I would really appreciate feedback, stories, constructive criticism, advice, or whatever you have for me!
My last reason for writing this blog is just so that I can always look back, remember, and learn.
So, two more days until I am officially a student teacher! I'm pretty sure I'm ready. I've got my placement, I've talked to my cooperating teacher, I have all of my tools ready for the assignments I have to do in the school, and I've bought my lunch box.
My placement is at Paw Paw Elementary School in Paw Paw, Illinois. It's about a 35 minute drive from DeKalb so it's not too bad. My cooperating teacher, Beth Foose, has told me that I couldn't have been placed in her class during a better year because she only has four students in the morning and two in the afternoon. I forgot to ask what grades and disabilities....oops.... I have three classes at NIU that I have assignments from to do while I am in the school. It makes me nervous how much work we have to do in the short time that we are in the school, but my professors this semester have been really understanding and flexible. Now, as far as my lunch box goes, being a poor college student and soon-to-be poor special ed teacher, although I could afford the lunch box, my parents are the ones paying for the food that goes in it, which I find kind of sad since I don't even live with them at the moment. I took a special trip home to get this lunch box food!
Over the summer, I was having a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. For a while, I was so afraid of going into an elementary school and being a teacher that I considered changing my major.
Changing my major at this point would have meant not graduating in four years, so I was willing to put my life on hold just to avoid going into a school and finding out I'm a horrible teacher. I wanted to change my major to psychology, so I enrolled in a psychology class to see how I would like it....I HATE it! I have never been more sure of the fact that I am meant to be a teacher than I am right now. The closer I get to my first day, the more my excitement outweighs my nervousness.
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