Week 1

I am so in love with my students! This class was a blessing in disguise because I was so afraid of sixth grade and now I can't imagine being in any other class.

1. Describe your teaching day.

For day one we decided to go the school for the entire day just to get a feel for the kids, the schedule, and the time of day that we would fit in best. I think this was a good plan because our class is SO active! We were able to see how our teacher uses management strategies, and she puts them to great use! She has SO many! AM kids start off with literacy, and then the PM kids come in at 9:15. They grade their math, watch CNN News, go over math problems, and then do the pledge and greeting circle. Then they begin math, which takes about an hour. Then comes specialties and lunch. Tons of the kids come in during lunch to work on assignments, and they love it. They see it as such a privilege and it is always their choice. The second half of the day is science, and then the AM kids leave and the PM kids have literacy time.

2. Describe your favorite part of the day.

I think my favorite parts of our days are transition times. The class knows their routines so well and each student has a job to do. Certain students have jobs to turn on the music during breaks or transitions. I LOVE how much we use music in the classroom! Usually they choose Brave by Sara Bareilles or Roar by Katy Perry or Imagine Dragons. All of the kids sing and dance and it's hilarious to witness. They are so comfortable in the classroom that they don't care about looking silly, and I think it is great that our teacher can build such an environment for them.

3. What went well, what didn't work and what did you change?

The second day, Brandi and I taught the math lesson (quite informally). Our teacher had training, so there was a sub in the class, and we knew the math game the kids were playing from the previous day. Our teacher just left the sub instructions saying that we would know what to do for math. Since we were just going off of the day before, we didn't have a lesson plan or anything. I thought it went well, especially for the second day, but since Brandi and I didn't talk about it beforehand, our instruction kind of overlapped. It would have gone better if we would have discussed it a little more. The most important thing though- the kids understood it! Yeah! :)

4. To help your students you would...

I walked around and assisted a lot because we didn't teach a formal lesson yet. Our teacher needed a lot of help in math, and so that is where I spent the majority of my time. I helped the kids one on one understanding coordinate grids and graphing points.