Week Nine.
This week during my observation period with the first graders we had a substitute teacher in our class. I was happy to see the students well behaved with the substitute. I think that they had the same substitute teacher once earlier in the year. After participating in class this Tuesday I am thinking that having the same substitute teacher fill in for you every time you miss class would probably be the most ideal circumstance. The students remembered the teacher and she reminded them of a good day they had in the past which appeared to be a morale booster.
It was a pleasure for me to have been able to observe the classroom management techniques that the substitute teacher used with our first graders. I would like to emulate her patient responses to distracted students, as well as her very concise expectations about classroom participation.
Wednesday in our writers’ workshop one on one time me and my writing buddy continued our work on his biography about Amelia Earhart. We finished up our research by discussing her disappearance by looking at maps and re-reading about her final flight. We started to write a rough draft of the biography. We ran out of time after writing a few sentences describing Amelia’s childhood. I was happy that we got started on the rough draft. Now that it is started he can continue to work on the story by using the facts we researched and listed chronologically.
Thursday was our first day with the third graders whom we are doing a four week unit with. Today was an opportunity for us to meet and get to know each other a bit, and also for us to introduce our idea for a unit of study. I brought a short questionnaire to help generate some discussion about reading and other interests. One thing that I found worked well was filling out my own copy and offering to trade mine for theirs so that we could read about each other. An unexpected outcome was the students’ desire to read each other’s responses. I asked if it was ok to share and they were all enthusiastic about the opportunity to read about their classmates. After our greeting we read a Magic School Bus Story about the five senses. I told them that I was hoping to talk to them more about the five senses over the next four weeks. We did not get through the entire story, but the reading went well. I told them we would find out what happens to the students in Mrs. Frizzles class next time.