Skip to main content

One week of student teaching down...

I have to admit, that this past week has been the most exhausting and exhilarating week I've had since I was in the Navy.  I began my student teaching journey this week as a long term substitute teacher.  I am teaching Math to middle school students who are in the 6th and 7th grade, and boy am I learning a lot!

My students have been in school for 2 weeks now, this upcoming week will be their 3rd.  I am the 3rd teacher they have had, and the one they have had for the longest.  The school I'm teaching at uses C Scope for their curriculum, so my students do not have text books.  This is something new for me, and I feel like I'm starting to overcome this challenge.   In all of my classes, my students seem to be lagging behind, so I've been giving remedial instruction this week to make up for the lack of a more structured instruction process.  I have a lot of material to cover, and not much time to cover it in.  Each class is with me for 1 hour a day.

Currently I am focusing on fractions, decimals, percentages, and teaching them helpful ways to get this stuff figured out.  One thing I will be doing starting this week is focusing on my classroom management style with the students during their instruction.  The first week was a get to know you week, and while I've figured out my student's personality, they've gotten comfortable enough with me, that now we are having discipline issues.  This week begins pop quizzes, referrals, and a faster paced instruction.  Yes to their horror, there will be homework as well!

As far as my Master's is concerned, I feel VERY blessed to have had labor day off so that I can catch up with my homework.  It seems that lesson planning and paper grading have taken up the majority of my home time, and that hasn't left a lot of time to prepare for my classes or my certification exams.  But, I feel certain that expediting my testing will ensure I get a position next year as a contract teacher, so I'm staying up until my eyes can't stay open, waking up early, and asking everyone who has watched me teach for what I can do to better myself.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Spiral Review In All Its Glory (Decimal of the Day)

   The school district I am in has cumulative tests covering everything taught each six weeks.  The twist is, these tests are made by administrators and not teachers.  This really isn't a problem to me.  It is a learning tool for me and a teachable moment for my students on the importance of all material covered in class.       We as teachers can really get bogged down in the variables of a test like this.  By that I mean, oh the test question was worded funny or well they were only given one chance to show mastery on this, my students are _______ fill in the blanks, thoughts, and reasoning.  The one thing my school district did was have us put our scores up standard by standard right next to every other teacher in the district who had to teach the same thing we did.  My oh my did I fall short!  I say I fell short even though I had great reasoning as to why my scores looked the way they did... but upon further reflection ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Live Binders

After 1/2 a week in the classroom I have pretty good reviews to report about Live Binders .  For those that didn't read my last post about the conference I just attended, I'll give a brief synopsis.  I learned a lot of cool free and some not so free technology apps and programs to use in the classroom.  My goal was to integrate all of these different types of programs into my lesson plans here and there to spice up life a little bit.  One of the programs I introduced this week is Live Binders.  LB is essentially a virtual 3 ring binder that you can add notes, documents, and websites to.  I wanted to introduce this tool to my students to give them a way to organize their notes, and encourage them to discover new resources for class.    Even better; LB has a free app for the iPad.  Here is a little video from their site: Here is what I've learned so far: Some students took to this program like a duck to water.  They were ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spring Break... Explorations!

It is that wonderful time of the year when teachers and students alike get to take a HUGE break from school and relax.  For us, its time to sweep out the cobwebs, shove in some creativity, and of course get some much deserved R&R. I look all over for inspiration because lets face it... sometimes my brain is fried!  All the classroom management, grading, test making, lesson planning, I get excited when I'm on target and look all over the internet to find great ideas for making it even better.  There is no shame in this!  Ok... I have no shame about doing this! HA! Today, I'm going to share my awesome resources :) Teachers Pay Teachers is a great resource for finding all types of lesson plans, activities, power points, tests, Common Core Resources, and so much more.  The cool thing is this stuff is MADE BY TEACHERS, and tested out in their classrooms.  Prices for your favorite selections range from FREE on up.  You can earn credits for fre...
Post a Comment
Read more