All About Week Two!

1. Describe your teaching day. This week, Karen and I had our first observation with Lynda Williams. Do any of you know her? I've never had any classes or interacted with her before, so I was really nervous. Also making me nervous was the fact that we were teaching social studies during a rotation time, so the class wasn't our teacher's class. I got so hot and sweaty with nerves, but the class was really great. We also got to teach our teacher's class on Friday during science, and that was a lot of fun, apart from a couple of moments where our teacher had to step in because of the way the kids were acting.
2. Describe your favorite part of the day. I think my favorite parts have been getting to know the other teachers and working in small groups with students during math reteach time, when the teacher go over the material in the previous test and reteach what didn't stick. This week, we were working with the students who had the lowest scores on the previous test. The test was on integers, which I know can be a really difficult concept to grasp, but I have loved helping the kids out. And getting to know the other three teachers has been great; the four sixth-grade teachers here work together and are amazing at helping each other out. I love watching them cooperate! Also, one of the teachers has a baby just a bit younger than mine, so when I need to pump milk during lunch, I actually have someone to talk to! It's been awesome!
3. What went well, what didn't work and what did you change? The lesson we did for social studies went really well. The students were knowledgeable, the paid attention, and they asked awesome in-depth questions! Strangely, the thing that didn't seem to work so well was when we randomly assigned our class into small groups during science using a cup with sticks containing students' names. They laughed, groaned and cheered depending on which group they ended up in, and my teacher had to tell them off because apparently they've never acted like this with her. Let's see... change: I found I had to modify the way I explained things during the math reteach sessions, because I was dealing with concepts I really understood that they didn't. That was really interesting, but insightful. Being out in the field has taught me so much!
4. To help your students you would... The one student I mentioned last week with ADHD was gone for almost the entire week, so instead I tried to help out an ESL student who goes to resource and has to have his tests read out loud. It seems like he really struggles to be engaged during the lessons; I caught him rolling his water bottle across the room at one point. However, I did get to work with him during guided reading, and it seemed to go well; he showed a lot of interest in understanding some of the words in his story and appeared to understand my explanations. He has friends and seems pretty happy, but he's got to be the most soft-spoken boy I've ever met. I like him a lot.