A Breakdown of My Daily Schedule

5:30--6:45 Wake up and get ready
7:00- Gather materials and prepare for the day's lessons
7:30--2:35 Teach
2:40-5:00/6:00-- Plan for the following week, have meetings, grade papers, prepare lessons, and all of the little things no one ever thinks about
5:15/6:15-12:00-- Continue writing lesson plans for the following week, eat dinner, create any centers, SmartBoard files, PowerPoints, worksheets, or other materials for lessons
12:00-12:30-- Pick out clothes and get ready for bed
12:30-5:30--Sleep

This is my life right now. It is exhausting, but, despite my complaining, I am enjoying student teaching. If only there were 30 hours in a day.

Alarm Clock Woes

So... I definitely slept through my alarm Thursday morning. Long story short, I was late to school and missed the morning routine and morning meeting with my class. I made it just in time for them to come back from specials and begin teaching. I was/am pretty embarrassed. Needless to say, I set two alarms now. Other than that major mishap, Thursday and Friday went very well. With the sub in the back on the computer and no one else in the room to observe me, I felt like a real teacher. It was pretty great!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Well, I knew this would happen. I've been slacking on my posts. Oh well, I'm doing what I can.

I really needed this 3 day weekend to get myself together and ready to start taking over more responsibilities. I have already planned Writing for next week. Since we have 4 teachers in there 2-3 days a week, we split up who is teaching. I come up with some mini-lesson ideas and bounce them off of the other teachers, and then we pick which ones we want to teach. I am doing strong leads on Monday and conduct Author's Chair next Friday! My mission for this weekend is to find some books with good leads. I took over reading this week, and today went really well *knock on wood*! My mentor teacher is gone for the next two days, so all of the teaching is left up to me (the sub is there for support lol). I am excited and nervous at the same time. It's a lot of work and preparation, but I'm really enjoying it so far! That's all I can share for now. (I'll post about how the next two days go!) Wish me luck!

Some Pictures

So this week has had it's ups and downs. Planning ELT has proven to be a lot more work than I anticipated. Planning 2 small group math activities and an independent math center every day is already taking its toll. Nevertheless, I did remember to take a picture of my room and my new desk! So that will be the extent of my post today! Now I have to go read The CAFE Book and get the down low on this before taking over reading next week!

Beth, This One's For You!

So I participated in my first Writing Workshop experience in an elementary classroom! Until now, everything I've seen in a classroom has either been nothing like the writing workshop model. After reiterating to my teacher how much I really value writing workshop, she agreed and started planning it that way. After using the 4-square model and other prewriting tools for several days, my teacher let my students just write. They were so eager to actually take their prewriting and make it a solid piece of writing. There are several teachers during writing: my mentor teacher, myself, the EIP teacher, and three days a week the gifted teacher. So we were able to go around and have mini conferences with each student. I was so excited to read what they were writing. Oh, I think I was able to give some good suggestions, something I'm not always confident about. What's great is that we all collaborated and planned the mini/focus lessons for next week, rotating the lead teacher every day. We also got everyone on the same page and agreed that the students should have the majority of the time to write, and to write about what they WANT to write. I really pushed for no prompts, at least not yet. What's really cool is that we are each going to have student-teacher conference notebooks. Each of us will work with a few students all the way from prewriting to publishing, and we are going to use our notebooks to track our conferences and set goals with the students. Having so many teachers means that we can really hit every student and conference with them multiple times a week. I'm really excited about all of this, which probably sounds ridiculous and lame to non-teachers, but I don't care. I can't wait to start!

A Place of My Own

I got my own desk today! So far, I have been taking over the kidney table at the back of the room, which was fine. However, one of the janitors told my teacher about an extra desk he had, and my teacher asked if I could use it. So after school we rearranged things and put our desks facing each other. I feel so official now! In other news, I stayed until after 6 this evening. We had another team planning meeting and then my teacher and I moved the desks, organized a lot of stuff, and basically started getting our shit together. I feel better about a lot of things, but still overwhelmed with other things like lesson plans. Not to mention, I take over reading in 2 weeks and my teacher hasn't even figured out how to implemented her own way of teaching reading. She uses The CAFE Book, which I am not familar with. But she hasn't done anything from CAFE since week 1. How am I supposed to plan using CAFE if I've never seen it? Anyway, that's my mini issue right now.

So Much To Do; So Little Time

I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this blog up. It's only the second week and I already feel so overwhelmed. If I'm this busy now, how is it going to be when I am teaching everything for 3-whole weeks? Anyway, tomorrow my mentor teacher will be gone for the afternoon, which means there will be a sub. What this really means is that I am teaching Social Students and ELT (Extended Learning Time). Even though I officially take over responsibility for ELT next week, I have taught the students during ELT all this week. I basically do things off the cuff, and luckily it seems to be going pretty well. I will be glad when I have actual lesson plans to follow next week. I like planning ahead and putting more thought into lessons before teaching. In fact, I'm going to start on my lessons now.

My First Friday

So I missed the jeans memo for today and wore a dress while all of my colleagues chilled in jeans, but that's okay. I planned morning meeting yesterday and today, and they both went great. I also jumped in and taught a little reading yesterday and math today so that my teacher could get some last minute things figured out. Although I would prefer to plan out when I teach, it's still teaching which means I still loved it. The kids are starting to see me in that 'teacher' role, which is definitely a good thing. Next week I "officially" start planning Morning Meeting. I have to upload the plans to the 5th Grade lesson plans on this website. It feels so official. Anyway, I'm having fun planning morning meeting activities and discussing lesson ideas with my mentor teacher. We decided on my Calendar of Requirements for the semester. She really is great to work with! I am glad it's Friday though. I am wore out!