My journey has been well under its way since August 13th. My student teaching placement is in kindergarten at a nearby elementary school, with the teacher I requested. I was ecstatic about the placement when I found out, and it has been such an amazing experience since that day.
We have a classroom of 21 students. We have eight girls, and thirteen boys. It is absolutely chaotic, and some days we feel like all we have done all day is simply wrangle geese. That is, we have simply reminded them of rules and really not taught anything. But, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE EVERY RAWKUS MINUTE OF IT!
We began the second nine weeks today. Tomorrow we are closed because of hurricane Sandy dangers, but I anticipate we will be back in school Wednesday for our Fall Festival day! We are not permitted to wear costumes to school Wednesday for Halloween, so the school has created a Fall Festival day in which we do all things fall-related. We create hay scarecrows, get our faces painted, (and other things I can't remember), have a Halloween class party, and gather as a whole school to watch It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (or whatever it's called). I hope we are back in school for this day... I am super excited to see the kids' reactions!
This nine weeks we covered SO much!
Language Arts:
Upper and lowercase letter recognition
Letter sounds
Writing, recognizing, and letter sound of: Mm, Ss, Bb, Rr, Ff, Dd, Nn, Pp, Cc, Hh, Tt, Gg
Sight words: a, I, my, like, the, go
Rhyming
Author/Illustrator roles
Front/back cover and title page of books
PALS testing
Math:
Patterning
Counting 1:1 correspondence
Rote counting to 25
Identifying numbers 1-5
Identifying positions
Creating and identifying sets that have more, fewer, or the same number of objects as a given set
Sorting
Science:
Basic life processes of plants
What plants and animals need to survive
Colors
Sorting based on a feature (flexible/stiff, curved/straight)
Social Studies:
Betsy Ross
Pocahontas
Powhatan
I KNOW I have forgotten some things, but this just shows you, our babies have learned SO much since they stepped foot into our classroom.
I love being a teacher, and couldn't imagine myself doing anything else. I will begin to update more and post lesson plans/finished products that our bright little ones have been working on.
In the meantime, here is a Pinterest creation my CT (cooperating teacher) and I made. We are avid Pinterest followers, and we use the website AT LEAST twice a week in our lesson plans or presentations for our students.
Our classroom theme is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to expose students to letters constantly.
It is made from an old lamp, pool noodle, brown felt, an umbrella, and multiple shades of green felt and tulle cut to form coconut tree leaves. We then put velcro on the back of small foam letters, and ask students to spell sight words, spell their name, put the letters in ABC order, spell made-up words, or even try to spell their friends' names. The kids love it!
Until next time, readers.... Be safe if you are in the affected areas of Hurricane Sandy.
Oh, PS- I passed all three of my tests for licensure with ease. They were difficult, mind you, but you should be able to pass if you actually care about the career you are about to embark on.
