13 days left!!!

Today, the students were terrible! They were driving me crazy! I thought it was just me, but when I went to pick them up from specials the computer teacher had them all sitting on the floor. He wrote me a note and told me how terrible they were. There behaviors were unexceptable and they were way to chatty! I had to come up with a punishment, so we walked around the field 2 times at recess. there is 2 and a half more weeks of school and grades are due this week! The kidos know this too so I am not looking forward to next week when I try to get them to do something! This class is beyond challenging. Once student brought a pocket knife to school on Friday, but it was all handled today. I am just complaining. I am just frustrated with the kids, here I am having so many awesome ideas that I cannot do because of their behaviors. All of it reflects poorly on me also

bucket fillers

The fourth graders have not improved much in their behaviors. I am having a really hard time with these kidos because they all feed of each other. The class is a good class and I do care about them. There are just a few students that seek all the attention! They know it and then the class gets on their case. Which then involves everyone else.Even the counselor came into the classroom to teach a lesson and she did not finish they were so disrespectful! The students had to come in at their recess to finish the lesson. 

The principal asked the counselor to come back into the classroom and do an activity with them. She read some book about buckets and water being in the buckets. It was suppose to represent your mood and how it is affected. Compliments fill your bucket and negative events spill your bucket. The students seemed really engaged. We started our own classroom bucket where they were to put names of the students that were good to them into a bucket. At the end of the week we choose names. It is similar to the friendship bucket I did with the second graders. This did not help the behaviors really only about a day.

Long-term sub

I am excited starting April 3rd I will be a long term sub in a 4th grade classroom at Willow Creek at the same school as I did my 2nd grade student teaching. I feel like I will be able to have that sink or swim motivation that I need right now.

I am sad though about leaving Middleton Middle. The sixth graders have grown on me alot. O well, I will be able to experience upper elementary.

Anyways, today was ok! The other student teacher and I were the subs for the day! The students did ok without the “real” teachers as they would say. It was like an up and down process today. I also was able to sub for 8th graders during my prep today also. They were rowdy! I would much rather teach a lesson while subbing than having them have book work. O well!

TAKE CARE!

Subbing for 8th grade!

Today, I am subbing the last half of the day in 8th grade. Since my 6th grade Prep is at the end of the day and 8th grade Prep is at the beginning it made for a LOONG day!

I actually enjoyed the 8th grade students I taught. 6th hour was an intervention class which they were suppose to watch cable one news, but it never came on. So I just had to come up with various clever ideas to entertain them because many of them did not have have their stuff with them. Nexy was advisory which they just did some boring spelling bookwork! I would not have wanted to do it either! The last who periods were English which they are learning about the Civil War.

I was warned about 7th hour because they were very loud, which they were. However their assignment was a writing prompt that they actually contributed a lot. Managing the class was a challenge, but I really enjoyed them! I did not get through any of the questions they were suppose to answer! I felt terrible. I had to read to them like 15 mins about a a civil war event, that I thought was interesting, but so wordy it took away. HALF of the stuff I did not even know what the story was about! So i am sure it went over their heads.. O well!

8th hour on the other end were suppose to be the “angels” However, they were not. They were quiet, but they were whispering (which in my opinion is more distracting) while I was reading. The discussion was dry.

So teaching varies on the class by far and just because they are a “good” class does not mean there is better components of them!

Middleton Middle School

Hello WORLD!

I feel like I have not blogged in the longest time. That is because I have not!

This semester I am doing my student teaching at Middleton Middle School in a co taught class of 6th graders with two teachers and another student teacher. There is four of us, and even for some time (about 3 weeks) Danna was in the same classroom. I like the class a lot.  There is 66 students with about 21 of them are “at-risk” for behavior and/or academics.

This experience has been completely different from my second grade classroom. I like sixth graders and the age level, but I am having some difficulties. The difficulties come with the classroom dynamic itself. I think I could work in a co-teaching environment in the future. I just feel right now it is hard for me because I need that sink or swim mentality and I do not have it in this placement at all! There is always so many of us in the class and I do not have the opportunity to just TAKE OVER!!!!!!!!!

My AHHHHHH!!!!!! I am going to go crazy moment!

Trust me, with this group of kids, I tell myself…. AHHHH! and get tired of hearing myself because so much of my time goes to classroom management! This time it was not a management issue.

The music teacher assigned each first and second grade class to make different decorations for the Holiday program, which is next week! Our class is in charge of making large snowflakes. My lead teacher thought great this will be fun for the kids they can make them and put glue where they are and then add glitter to the snowflakes.

My lead teacher and I both were going to assist in helping the students make their snowflakes, but last minute she was asked to go to a third grade class and teach for 30 mins!

I felt comfortable with it and gave each student a large piece of chart paper like 2×3 ft. They folded it into fourths. All so good. Once the kids got their they were wild and not listening. Once I got their attention, I continued on and I thought I have concrete good directions on what to do next. I walked around and helped the students. Then 2/3 of the students did it completely wrong!!!!!! I was so frustrated. I even make alot of extras for the students who messed up, then they went through that. I finally was so impatient. I ran down the hall to get the lead teacher. I was going to stay in the third grade and she was going to take over my second grade. It ended up not working out. i took a deep breath and went back into the classroom. I had the students who messed up help the other students. We did it, but we only have 7 snowflakes whhen there needs to be at least 30! Ahhhhh! I was so frustrated. I was alot to tackle with just one adult. I learn in future to try to get a parent volunteer to help.

Challenge? Math help!

O dear! The kids are wild! I have been thinking about different ways to keep the kids on task. My lead teacher has too. The kids have not been about to do different centers. We have taken all the centers away from the kids, so we are doing different alternatives with the students. We even changed their math time.

Normally, we would come in from lunch do a mad minute with the kids, watch a short video that goes with their math curriculum, then I do the first page and the second page of their math with them, then they are free to do the last by themselves and once they are finished can go to centers.

We changed it to mad minute, short video, math and then work on individual math activities at their desk. This failed.

So now we come in from lunch, read to the students for 15 mins, then math video and math then it is time for them to go to their specials. It is hard because even with this they have been all over the place. We have mad math as fun as we can and do different group competitions and they are interested one time and that is it. So we have been doing that throughout the days. They just all seem disengaged. Even my lead teacher and I are struggling with keeping them engaged.

My advisor came in to observe during math and even he was like…. WOW this class is a challenge!

 

Sub

For Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week I subbed for another 2nd grade teacher. I really enjoyed the class! They were well behaved, but it made me think… it is possible! The problem is the teacher is super strict with her students. I do not want to be disrespectful to the students to get them to cooperate.

I was excited to be able to come up with my own work for the class because the teacher said I can do my own thing. I showed up prepared and she had it all packed! So I was bummed, but it made it easier for me. On tuesday afternoon the 2nd grade classes watched Charlettes Web. Which was nice because I was able to prepare and grade during that time.

IT WASNT ME! Haha

O my this week was a shorter week the students only had 3 days of school and Friday was a work day for teachers to do grades. It is a third through the year…. CRAZY!

Well I have the funniest story. I show up to class on Tuesday and one of my students asked me if we could listen to this cd (keep in mind we do not play music in the class) I thought for a minute it was the songs for their christmas performance they are doing in December. NOOOO … I was mistaken. It was an orange cd with writing and the words were cute off the side.. I looked and it had a date… it said 2000. I thought for a minute and thought… NO WAY! Until the student proceeded to sing… “IT WASNT ME!” It was the Shaggy CD from 2000! I really got a kick outta that!

The same day… I took a note from a student that said…. You think I am a baby. Then where are my diapers. Circle Yes or No. ( i know it doesn’t make sense) I thought it was funny because we were learning ordering words that day… and thought … hey THEN is an ordering word. way to go!

Update! My student with the homeless situation was there this week. I am happy to see him. I know he is a true challenge for us….He really should be in the extended resource classroom to be fair to him and the other students. I do like this kid a lot though even though he does not follow classroom procedures. I just see what he is capable of! We had an hour and a half meeting about him that they had an autistic expert come in and talk about dealing with students with autism. We watched some videos of my student and analysed this behavior. There was like 10 of us there including his dad. We were glad to see him show up. We also, have some accommodations we have to do with this student. Most of which we were doing. Our goal is to get him engaged in the class because he does not do anything that any of the other students are doing. If we are on the floor he wants to be in my lap. If we are at our desks he is walking around. He glared at me for 2 hours last week and refused to even put his name on his paper because we covered up the classroom pencil sharpener. We are going to incorporate more music in our classroom… Just not Shaggy… this student already sings Thriller all day long! HAHA! I could go on forever with his accommodations.

Veterans Day and the week

Overall, this week has been my best week. I felt like it went smoothly. I had most of the week planned out in advanced and of course it did not go as planned at all. Some plans were not even used this week, which I can do another week. On Tuesday the school counselor came in and talked with the students for 25 minutes about listening. It was amazing how much just having a 25 minutes break to sit back and grade papers really broke up the day and gave me a chance to relax. It is a challenge because 3 days a week I am on recess duty, so even then there is not time to just plan and relax.

I got a big reality check this week. I heard that many of the first grade teachers do 3 worksheets a day! I am not saying that to discredit these teachers. I just realized in our class we do 3 a week! It made me realize how much I really do do ( ha-ha I said do do) to get the students engaged.

On Friday was Veterans Day and in the beginning of the day we grew pictures to make a book to give to the senior center for the Veterans. I was amazed to see some of the creative pictures the student drew. However I had to huddle them around and talk to them about being careful about what kind of pictures to draw. This way students did not draw bloody war scenes that many of them originally wanted to do.

Once a week we have a reward set up and if they do not get so many warnings they get free time. I had this awesome paper link flag idea set up. I had then make the links and some students help me glue them to a piece of paper to make the flag. The students asked about free time, but I said when we finish this we can get free time. It ended up taking the entire 45 minutes and even I had to stay after school and finish it myself. I did not want to carry it over into the next week.