First Week in Field! :-)

I had a great first week in Field. On the first day, there was a district meeting for some teachers, so my Field teacher had a substitute. He asked if I wanted to come Wednesday or just come the next day when he would be there. I came on Wednesday while the sub was there. She was a 65+ year-old, purple/red-haired lady from Heber who just started subbing, because...of her 11 children, none of her grandchildren live by her, and she misses them. We shared the responsibilities of the day. I was there from 8:00 - 11:30.

We each introduced ourselves to the class. The sub had lots of fun stories about herself (like when she was a surfer girl and a skateboarder, making their own boards). I was able to try "Classity-Class!" "Yessity-Yes" on the students. They had already seen it with another teacher, so they had it down.

During part of the day, we read about electricity in a mini-magazine with students from another class (the classes switched for Science). I drew pictures on the board to demonstrate what they were reading as they read. The sub pulled a fast one and announced to the class that, "Now Mrs. Woolf will teach you all about what she just drew on the board, concerning electricity." Hmmm. So, I winged it. It was fine, but I realized that when I teach my formal lessons (first one, this Tuesday...on the Revolutionary War), I'm going to have to have another management tool in place.

I was glad, on the second day (Thursday), to have the teacher back. The room was a "little" quieter with him there. I did notice that he doesn't necessarily reprimand in private, as Keri had told us to do; but honestly, I haven't seen many teachers do that. I think sometimes they figure it helps to have one person be the "example" for the rest of the class (and sometimes it's a positive example and other times...not so much).

I'm nervous to be teaching on Tuesday. I put together a Google Presentation last night for the lesson. I was going to do the Inquiry Method on this lesson; but I may change it and do Direct Instruction.

First Set of Questions to be answered during our field experience:

1. Describe your teaching day: I did that above.
2. Describe your favorite part of the day: they had their Veterans' Day Program for the other students in the school on Friday. That was Wonderful! They let me be one of the gang. It was my grade (5th) that was putting on the presentation. Very touching! Our class has a 5th grader who sings like a pro! Plus, the school's tech guy should be a professional singer (he did a solo).
3. What went well, what didn't work and what I would change: introducing ourselves (the sub and I) went well; so did pretty much everything when we were on our own that first day, except for when the class started to get a little "too talky" during my very impromptu "Science lesson." What I would change is to have a classroom management technique in place before trying to teach an actual lesson.
4. To help your students you would...this is a good, thought-provoking prompt, because this is a class of gifted students. I noticed that two of the students who were super talkative when the sub and I were there alone were some of the best students when the teacher was back and in charge. I believe that this is because the teacher knew how to have those students be "extra helpful." He kept their busy minds and busy bodies occupied with extra things to "help" with. So, what I would do to help my students is to make sure they're not bored by presenting challenging content in an interesting way. I hope I can do that for my lessons! (I see that for teachers, part of the problem in creating amazingly superb lessons HAS to be the time factor. I think that any teacher could come up with all kinds of cool lessons; but time (to prepare) is always an issue, I think.)