Student Teaching Shenanigans: Valentines and In-School Field Trips

I have to do a little blog here about my first holiday as a teacher in a classroom.  Yesterday was Valentines day and while it is an adorable holiday filled with love, I believe that it is also a holiday to try to get your teacher's fat! My evidence for saying this? For Valentine's day, I received a total of 4 boxes of candy, 10 or so valentines with candy attached to them, 5 cupcakes, 2 brownies and a cookie! Holy Guacamole! I am surprised that just looking at all this has not sent me into a diabetic coma! Aside from the enormous amounts of sugar, I do think that the holiday is very awesome and I loved spending it and doing fun activities with the children!

There is one thing that I am curious about though.  Is there some sort of trigger or button in a child's head that tells them to act like a nut on a holiday?? I am not exaggerating when I say that every single student, even my best ones, were practically bouncing off the walls! And I didn't even give them much sugar! They only had pretzels, chips, cheese curls and a cookie at the party! Makes no sense at all!  If a scientist can find the cure for holiday insanity in students, I would be much obliged!

My other little story for this post is about a in-school field trip we had today.  The concept of In School field trip evaded our students- we had some even bring their lunches today for the field trip, even though the form specifically said that was not needed and that the people were coming to us.  The "trip" was two women from a local park system who came to our class and did experiments with Solids and Liquids, the science unit I am in the middle of teaching.  They did an excellent job and the kids loved the experiments they did! The only thing I was disappointed about was that half of the experiments they did gave away half of my lessons that I still have to teach.  I was sitting there watching them do Sink vs Float and was disappointed because I am planned to do that lesson with the kids tomorrow! My co-op made a note for next year that if they do this field trip again, to do it in March or so, after the unit is finished so as not to spoil the surprises and lessons we teach the students.  I think the kids will still be excited about the science we do anyway, they love learning about it!

And of course, gotta end this post with a one liner from a student.....I ask the students "When your car is broken, where do you take it to get it fixed?" and a student pipes up and says "The Vet".....priceless I tell you!!

Student Teaching Shenanigans: First Observation

Today was my first observation with my supervisor, Marilyn. She is very nice so I was not really that nervous at all when I was doing the phonics lesson.  The lesson was about 50 minutes long and she observed the whole time.  After the lesson, we went to an office and did an interview where she told me about what she observed.  The observation was aimed at seeing if I had a good "teacher voice" and if I had good control over the class with positive interactions.  She said I did an excellent job, saying my voice was firm yet friendly and I was able to use it as a tool to keep the kids under control.  She said that I did good a reinforcing the students' positive behavior, kept a lively pace, and was well organized. What she would like me to improve is using the phrase "Ok" in my directives and increasing the wait time when I ask questions.  Overall, I think I did very well and I am so excited!  My next observation is for math an is at the beginning of February.

On another note, yesterday was another 2 hour delay day, which went a bit better than the day before because the delay was not for anything nearly as serious as last week, so almost all of our students came to class.  I was able to teach the phonics lesson in the afternoon and my co-op taught reading, making it a day that was useful.

Next week, I begin my unit on solids and liquids and make my first bulletin board with a snowman writing piece the students are going to do!  Got a lot of planning ahead!

Of course, I could not finish this post up without putting my new favorite one-liner, heard today.  I gotta tell the story that goes with this one liner though: A student came up and was complaining that a girl was telling her something that was wrong and my co-op says to her "If she told you to jump off a bridge, would you?".  the student said no and walked away.  Hearing this, another student comes up, taps on her desk and says "Someone told me to jump off a bridge once and I didn't do it."  It was all I could do not to break out in laughter right there!  I am having such a fun time with these kids!!