Summer School Dramatic Play

 Summer school in Menomonee Falls was a really great job for me. Work days were 4 hours, 4 days a week for 6 weeks. I worked with 2 classes teaching the same curriculum. Our theme for the class was traveling. Our first week was preparing to travel with passport, backpack, and travel buddy making. The next weeks were spent "traveling" to places all over the world from New York to Japan to Australia to Brazil. We tied projects into cultural and traditional things from each state or country. For the last week we did a few Olympics projects and made cheese heads for our return to Wisconsin!

 Everyday the kids made me laugh about something. I picked a great days of the week song that the kids loved, that was a fun surprise. I ended up listening to the song probably 500 times too :) I learned that some kids are nuts about Angry Birds and candy! Kids will also tell you whatever they want to which can be a good and bad thing sometimes! I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to run my own class for a few weeks to keep me fresh for what is to come when school starts in just a few weeks!

Winter snow scene with shaving cream and glue mixture for Alaska

Desert sand scene of the Mojave Desert

Panda masks after talking about China

Giraffe hand print art after talking about Africa

Student Teaching in Kindergarten

Picture from our trip right before Christmas break to the International Railroad Museum! We had a great time making cookies, playing "reindeer games," walking through the trains and seeing Santa. My placement in kindergarten was challenging, fun, and rewarding. I think I learned a lot about how I want to teach from this class.

Wedding weekend and teacher convention

  The last post I had was the Monday before Kelsey's brother's wedding! We all had a really great time! I successfully completed my longest driving trip only getting very switched around trying to leave Chicago! We may have driven through the O'Hare airport :) Needless to say that and the cop that almost gave me a ticket for parking on a road outside of a park could not overshadow the great weekend! So much love was in the air and happiness of all the guests their to be apart of it!

I danced as much as possible! It was fun to get all dressed up and party with friends I don't get to see very much, and the ones I see almost everyday too! I was able to go as Justin's date, Emily was Mac's date, Barrett was Dannie's date and Kyle just came!
There was a beautiful sunny day for the wedding and the next day for our track and cross country team pictures we just barely missed rain. With scheduling issues for a photographer our pictures, of course, were moved to the day we had to come back from Chicago. We ended up having to leave earlier than we would have liked

 to but at least the pictures didn't get rained out! That would have been very unfortunate! Even with going through O'Hare and turning around 4 times we still made it back with some time to get ready too!
Below I have the fabulous picture of the cross country team and underneath that one is the track team! We can clean up pretty nicely I must say! This next week of school was a short week for me with teacher convention! Only three days of school, one being our rocks and minerals field trip, a partial day off with working on report cards and the rest of the two days I kept busy getting errands done and preparing for conference!

That random day/week when everything is due...

I can hardly believe that I only have 12 days left with my third graders!! Where did the time go?! I am excited for kindergarten but nervous too! It will be interesting to see the differences between the ages of the children.
I am in the middle of my nonfiction unit/building block and the building block plans are due tomorrow!! We finished working on the key features of nonfiction so now it is nice to start working with nonfiction texts. Our project we will be doing as my "assessment" is a project with the name inspired by my supervisor! She was talking with me after my observation and I told her about the unit I was starting at the time. In her teaching she mentioned giving the students choices and ownership. She suggested making them become the experts and this word has stuck. I am planning on naming the final project of this unit, I'm the expert of... or something like that! I hope the kids have fun with it. The challenge I'm working on right now is how my lower readers can research anything they want to. Since the texts are limited for the lower readers, they may not have as many options as my readers who are above grade level for example.
Getting observed tomorrow for my last time at this placement and turning in my big project ahh! Already submitted my lessons and journal so that's a relief :) More to come later this week I hope before I head to Chicago with some friends for Kelsey's brother's wedding! Expecting to have a great time and tear up the dance floor even though Kelsey, Em and I can't take advantage of the open bar!

Beautiful October Week!

Last week was my first full week in the classroom! It was quite the experience! The toughest part was not having as much time to get things set up and things piling up on my desk. From moving around I would just set things there and then need to find the things for my next lesson under them, or I would find myself setting things down around the room too! After lunch was the biggest adjustment because after the kids come in from recess we have social studies, cursive writing now, and then reading. There aren't any breaks in here. We also had to sugary birthday treats last week that we had in the afternoon different days to try and break up the afternoon. I feel like I have adjusted well. There is no point to ever panicking because if I need to get something ready I just do it. The kids have something they can work on, usually from the last lesson we were doing.

I have also seen how important planning is. Someday I know everything I do and teach will be so natural, but currently I am figuring out what works and how to say things/demonstrate things for students. As a student myself, I know I don’t know everything and I enjoy learning everyday even if it means every lesson doesn’t go perfectly! Life makes those bumps along the way to challenge us and make us even better! I have already been learning when I have a few hands go up as soon as I finish explaining something that I may not think of all of the little details that the kids do. This shows me there is something I missed! When I make a mistake I am always quick to correct or explain. I think it's important for the kids to see that I am human and I don't know everything. It also keeps the kids on their toes. Sometimes I wonder if they are just waiting for me to get something wrong (or maybe they are just paying that good of attention!). A good one the other day was when a few thought I spelled important wrong. I guess to them it sounded like it should be spelled I-N and so on. 

While my friends not student teaching were getting ready to head home last Wednesday night/Thursday, I still had two days of school! It wasn't as bad as I thought. With being at school all day, running after I get back, dinner, shower, relaxing/working on things- my nights go by quick! Unfortunately that's why I find myself still awake past 11 most nights.  Anyways, THURSDAY was pretty great because after school I had a message from my mom on my phone...a little unusual. I wondered and listened to the message and my mom was telling me she had won 4 tickets to the Brewer game the next night! The game started at 4:07 so I knew I would be late since I usually leave after 3. My teacher ended up letting me leave earlier than usual and I didn't miss very much of the game! The Brewers ended up winning in the 10th inning and it was such a fun game. I joined my mom, grandpa and our good family friend Kim! I felt very lucky to be at such an important game! 

The rest of the weekend was very nice. I was able to relax a bit while seeing my family and running. My mom and I squeeze in about a half hour of shopping which is rare for us but I'm sure we will make up for it come Black Friday!

This is such a fun time even on the most exhausting days. Last week I had my first headache that was possibly from the busy-ness, maybe lack of sleep. I learn from the tiresome days and they remind me to value the days I leave school with some energy left! 

Last Week of September! WHAT?!

Wow time has been flying! My last few blogs were not focused on student teaching as much but this one is back to school stuff!

This week I have taken on everything except reading. Next Monday I will be beginning my nonfiction unit which is the unit I am using for my building block. Over the course of the week I was gathering materials and looking at books to use. I think I have everything I need to finish up this unit this weekend or at least finish up the first week of the unit. My building block is due Oct. 18 already and my review time with two professors is Oct. 25! Very soon so it's time to crack down!

I have been teaching unit 1 for math and Tuesday was the test. It went pretty well for most of them. For students with problems it is usually on one specific topic. Place-value has been a tough area for the students moving from hundreds to thousands with addition or the opposite way with subtraction. Problems will ask students to add/subtract 10, 100, 1,000 and they are changing more than just that one place value- tens, hundreds, or thousands. Today we did some work with the unit cubes- ones, tens, and hundreds in groups after our addition timed test. All week the students are doing their own things so since Friday is a catch up day, I wanted the students to be social. Hopefully they were helping each other out and learned something/became more familiar with the place values!

We have started a writing project about the students three favorite things. The first step was working with a chart to plan out the title and 4 squares to write intro paragraph ideas and the things they would like to say about their 3 favorite things. Planning is done and the intro paragraph is done for most of the students. Next week we will continue with our paragraphs, editing, and publishing with an illustration. Yesterday I had one girl that wrote her title and in the space for her first sentence wrote; "Don't like this" in bigger letters than normal, maybe taking up two spaces. Earlier that day we had to call this girls mother because she forgot an assignment that was already late. We are continuing to monitor her because she will have bad moments where she will just start crying if something small is wrong. I'm hoping next week we can go back to the writing and I will get her started fresh.

Social studies is going well; the students are still learning about geography and now we are moving into different types of maps and landforms. I continue to call on students randomly if I feel like they aren't following along or listening so I'm hoping the kids are going to keep catching onto this tactic.

Yesterday was picture day so the kids were dressed nicely, most of them. Talking with a few of the teachers some would say that they let their own children pick out the outfit to wear on picture day. I found this interesting because it gives the kid ownership, especially in the future. When they look back on the picture they can't blame mom or dad for what they wore and they can see a true representation of what the child looked like. One of the boys in my class was wearing and Elvis shirt which I thought was pretty funny but he really liked it! A girl that was wearing a dress flat out told one of our male gym teachers that she didn't have anything else on underneath (except underwear obviously!) so she didn't do crunches that day. Before getting the pictures taken there is a volunteer combing hair. Lets just say a few of the kids or parents buying the pictures should feel very lucky to have that lady!

Other stories... a boy told me he probably wouldn't have time to do his homework that night but I assured him that he should try to get it done! I thought it was funny that he at least tried to get out of doing it. 
- Had to pick up and move a desk yesterday during writing time. My teacher has been leaving me alone in the room to really get the feel that this is my class. The kids have been good for me but I do wonder if they really should be even better. The desk I had to move was because there was a conflict between two girls. I feel like this may have happened regardless of the person teaching. The first things I tried didn't work so I stopped and said ok, this needs to change. I asked for a volunteer to move seats and chose a person from those students. Between one girl switching spots with another they went in a circle around the room. I grabbed the girls desk with the longer way to go and picked it up. I think this impressed the kids a little bit :)
Today I mentioned that I was leaving for my meet and the kids weren't happy. I got a few hugs and sad faces. They are just too funny! The third grade teachers were talking yesterday at our meeting and we wonder how they like us because it's like a lot of times we are telling them to be quiet and follow directions. Somehow we are doing something right and I think it is because the children feel safe with us and know that we respect them.

Can't believe today is the last day of September! The temps definitely remind me that it is this time of year but it feels like I was just running in the summer heat and here I am going to run in fall weather at UWEC! Including this race I have 3 cross country races left as a Green Knight! I love doing this so much that I just don't want it to end. I can't fight it though, just need to go run as hard as I can & that is the plan today! EC is a tough course from what I have heard so time won't be the biggest thing to look at, effort will be! Happy September 30!

22 years old!

Ending the week Saturday after the track team function I went to see Lion King in 3D with Kelsey, Mandy, Justin, Meghan V., and Meghan B.! Of course we knew how the movie would go but it was still great! It had been awhile since I saw the movie and it was interesting to catch new things being older. As a kid, you just don't pick up on everything and understand the jokes!

For dinner we had a crew of 15 go to Texas Roadhouse!!!! It was so much fun! The girls table all went all out and ordered fancy drinks. Since Heppe and I were celebrating birthdays we had to go on the saddle...ended up going on the saddle at the same time! Pretty funny and very nice to go out with some good friends! :)

Sunday I was able to run my whole long run (9 miles) with McShea and Steph!! I was very excited that I could do the whole thing. We ran slower this week- Coach's orders but still it was a good step to finish that whole run. Packers won again!! Rest of the day was finishing lessons! Hopefully this weekend I get an earlier start on them because I have more to do!