Teaching

Life gets interesting when you are spending most of your time with third graders... Conversation that I had after stating that we would be getting a new student Tuesday:

S1: Miss Fiso, is it your daughter!?
Me: Ummm... No, I don't have a daughter and if I did she would not be old enough to join you for school!
S2: Miss Fiso do you have a baby?
S3: No, she's not married
S4: Why are you not married?
S3: She's only 22!
S5: My mom got married when she was 19.
S6: Don't worry Miss Fiso, my aunt isn't married and she is almost 40.
Me: I think we should move on to something other than my marital status... Let's maybe talk about why you all are calling out? ;)

Life these days... Crazy but good! I love my class and the people I work with, I could do without the double duty of teacher and student but I'm starting to get the hang of it!

First week

This week was kind of insane trying to get everything worked out but I love my class! On Fridays I have the students turn in their journals to me so that I can make sure they have been writing in them. I had some exciting entries. "Third grade should be called fun grade" "Miss Fiso has made it on to my pretty and nice list of teachers" ha! They are great! I have also received plenty of pictures and notes from my students as well. But my favorite is the stories they have written me as writing assignments. One assignment was a trick story... One girl wrote about a time she tricked her brother "It was so funny I lafed my head off. Well my head didn't go off"

I am so excited to actually be teaching but things are so busy and I feel like there is not enough time for everything that I need to do. I'm sure I will eventually get it figured out but until then...

Do all the things!

This internship has been the greatest thing but it has also kept me incredibly busy. We started Thursday and since then things have been nonstop! I love my students each one of them has their own great personality and they are so sweet to me... Friday morning was the parent morning. Parents scare me, even though they were all really kind. I had the worst case of nerves meeting the parents. I would much rather do the first day of school again and again. In case you were wondering, a teacher really can never finish all of their work (although it might be harder for me to be an intern because so much more is expected of me). I am supposed to put in a record of an evaluation for EVERY lesson I teach! Do you know how many lessons are taught in a day!? Needless to say, I have a lot of catching up as far as my record keeping goes...

Also, I felt like pictures so here you are:

My classroom job chart (don't you love all the colors?) and bookshelf 

My calendar, birthday chart, and sound board (it tells the students how loud they can be)

My mess, I still don't have everything organized. But I really don't have a place to put everything because....

The classroom belongs to another, see all her stuff in this corner... 

... and this corner? It is also in all the cabinets. In other words, I have no space for anything!

A view of my desk that I never use and the table that I constantly congregate to with all of my clutter.

Also, this is the only picture I took of myself the first week of the internship.
See that excitement!? I'm a teacher now!!!

One more... Isn't this video the cutest? (They are at school so I feel justified sharing it).

Five days!!!

School is coming so quickly and each day I get more excited about this upcoming year. Not too long ago I sent out a letter to my students and their parents telling them how excited I was to meet them and also giving them an assignment of sorts. I asked the parents to write to me about their children to help me get to know them. To include their likes and dislikes about school and their hobbies. I have been getting back responses (one girl even wrote me herself) and I am so excited to meet my class!

2 Weeks!

It has been a while but I am going to start using this blog again as I begin my first year of teaching (well my internship). I will be teaching third grade and I am so excited! I haven't been able to get into my classroom yet and won't be able to get in until the end of next week... Did I mention that school starts on the 25th!?

Today I spent a lot of time shopping for my classroom which is both good and bad! I found some good sales and I was able to use my teacher discount, but seeing as how I don't have access to my classroom yet all of my stuff it taking up space in my bedroom...

I am doing a rock star theme this year and I was struggling to find name plates that would fit my theme. I finally decided to just make them myself, I am quite proud of how they turned out. I am thinking that I will laminate them, that way I can re-use them if I decide to keep the rock star theme. I think they are pretty cute, what do you think?

You can't see it so well but there are 5 colors (Blue, Yellow, Purple, Pink, and Orange)

And for your viewing enjoyment... I am loving this cover at the moment.

Sub Day... Take 2!

So I woke up this morning and started getting ready when I got a text message from my mentor teacher "Hey, I'm not feeling too well so I'm taking a sick day. Would you like me to write sub plans for you or the sub?" (As I am not an official substitute I am not allowed to be there with the kids without a paid sub in the room) I decided that I would give it a try and so the sub plans were sent to me. The day started off well enough but due to unforeseen difficulties (Our class in charge of lunch workers) there was quite a bit of confusion during the late morning time... I finally gave up and we moved on to bigger and better (or just more educational) things. I started teaching my capacity math lesson. It went well. The students were able to figure out the conversions and when they struggled they were able to talk to their neighbor to figure it out. One of my biggest struggles with Math in the school is how much the students need to understand. I would love it if they could figure out why the formulas work or even ask specific questions to help them understand. But that is not the way the students learn math so trying to change their ideas in less than a month is extremely difficult!
Later on in the day I met with my guided reading group. We are getting to a great part of the book so it was interesting to see what they think about the book so far and to see how they are connecting the ideas in the book.  After guided reading we did Art. We talked about Georgia O'Keefe and then imitated one of her paintings using watercolors. It was a lot of fun and the students put a lot of work into it. After Art we talked about Haiku's and created a few traditional Haiku's. After Writing the students split up and went to reteach sections for math. The group I got seemed to understand the straight conversions but struggled with story problems that had multiple steps. It was hard for them to break things down in order to solve the equations.

... And that was my second sub day. It was crazy at times. Let's just hope that I have more control over the class when they are my own class (I'm sure that will be the case but who knows!).

**A little bit of humor but there is some bad language... Just a warning**

Week 2

Sorry I have been slacking this week on posting about my days at school. The BYU Lu'au was this week so I went from Class to the show home to plan lessons and then I slept so I didn't have much time for blogging, but don't worry this post will catch me up and then I will be on track for next week.

Monday: Today for math the students took a pretest on the measurement unit we are starting tomorrow. After the pretest the students were able to go to PE unless they had missing work. If they had missing work they had to stay in to finish their missing work. After PE the students went to lunch, when they came back we did guided reading. During guided reading I was able to meet with my group and we talked about what had happened in the book so far. We also discussed different strategies for making sure we understand what we are reading. After Guided reading the class watched a Bill Nye episode about magnets. After Bill Nye I taught a lesson about limericks. We reviewed the rules for limericks and watched a music video about limericks. I then had the students practice writing limericks individually. After I finished my lesson on Limericks I taught the students about the Industrial revolution and the trail of tears. After discussing some things about the industrial revolution and the trail of tears I assigned a side to each half of the classroom and we did a role play activity. Half of the class were the settlers and the other half were the Indians, whenever I tapped someone they were supposed to give me their point of view concerning the trail of tears. It was a great activity and the students made some great points to support their opinion.

Tuesday: Today the students were introduced to their new math unit by practicing converting standard length.  They were struggling with it so my mentor teacher asked me to teach that tomorrow instead of standard weight. After Math we had Writing. For writing today we went into the Computer lab to type up our limericks on the blog. The blog is a new thing for the class so it took a while to explain how it worked to the students but they got it figured out and had a really good time. After Writing we went to lunch then the students came back for guided reading. After guided reading the students went to Specialties for an hour. When they came back I was able to teach my social studies lesson about the War with Texas. It was great, the students always enjoy hearing about wars and this war got the students ready for the civil war so they were really excited.

Wednesday: Today I taught a lesson about standard length to review what we did yesterday and then I had the students work on their independent practice. After Math I was able to teach a science lesson about everyday magnets. We talked about industrial uses for magnets as well as home uses for magnets. we discussed the difference between regular magnets and electromagnets because the class is taking their science test tomorrow and they are worried about it. After science we went to lunch. After lunch I met with my guided reading group quickly before I had to leave for my practicum support meeting. At practicum support we talked about different books that we can make and use in the classroom.

Thursday: Today was crazy!!! There is no school tomorrow so Friday things had to be done today. We started off the morning with the students giving each other their spelling tests. After the tests had been given we went to the library for the Battle of the Books. For the Battle of the Books the students were grouped into threes and there were four books that had to be read. the Battle consisted of questions about each book. After the Battle of the Books the students took a very quick recess before coming in so that I could teach my lesson and get observed. The lesson was not the greatest but the lesson happened. I was talking about standard weight conversion so I got scales from friends and the students measured things with the scales before converting them. After some practice the students were supposed to finish their independent worksheets but the worksheets were too long so they didn't get it finished before lunch. After lunch the students came in for guided reading. During guided reading I went outside to read with one of the girls in the class. I was talking with her about her book and realized that she has not been comprehending the book at all. It was scary to me that she was 50 pages into the book and could not tell me what had happened so far. After Guided reading the class took their science test. If they finished early they got out their math worksheet and finished that. After the test we did passport writing, each student chose a country and every Friday someone presents about their country in front of the class. At 2:30 the class got ready for their class meeting. I love the idea of class meetings and the way that my mentor teacher implements them. During this class meeting the advice for life was about being positive and working toward goals. We watched a video that showed how important a positive attitude is.

Friday: Parent Teacher conference comp day... NO SCHOOL!!!!