Student Teaching-- Weeks 5-8

WOW it's been a crazy ride! I have loved every minute with my students and it has been a BLAST! I can really see myself teaching 4th grade, which I could never imagine before. In the past 3 weeks we have had Fall Festival, our DairyQueen field trip and our field trip to the Tarleton Play. Here are the details in order:

Fall Festival: Fall Festival is the one fundraiser the school has for the classes to make money for field trips and classroom supplies. The money raised stays with the classes as they advance in grade level. For example, the money the 4th graders made this year, if it is not all spent, will follow them to fifth grade. The money stays with the students until their senior year. If there is money left at the end of the year it goes towards scholarships for the seniors. The 4th graders sold raffle tickets for a 42 inch LG Plasma TV. We took the kids to walmart and tractor supply to sell tickets and they did a great job! At noon the day of Fall Festival, 4th grade had made just over $2000... JUST SELLING RAFFLE TICKETS!! Each student was required to sell $100 worth of tickets and every kid did it and then some! The night of Fall Festival was so much fun. Each class hosts a booth at the festival and the students work the booth. The 4th grade booth is a Plant Walk (think cake walk with plants). We had GREAT participation. Some participants were winning 3 or 4 times and just wanted to keep playing! At the end of the night, 4th grade had raised $3087.64!!! I was floored when I heard the amount! It's so awesome that the Huckabay community and Stephenville community supports such a great cause.

Dairy Queen Field Trip:
The Dairy Queen Field Trip is for the students who sold their $100 worth of tickets. Luckily, all of our students met this goal and we all got to go to Dairy Queen to celebrate! It was fun getting to see the kids in a different environment. We went with the 5th grade class. The kids were pretty well behaved. It did get a little loud (but that's normal with 35 kids!).

Tarleton Play Field Trip:
The next day (and my last day in 4th grade) was the BIG field trip. When I was in school, we would have field trips to the capitol, eat lunch and go back to school. BORING. At Huckabay a field trip is a FIELD TRIP. We left at 8:30 to go see the Tarleton Theatre Production "Peter Pan and Wendy". It was a very good show. The theatre was filled with several different schools from surrounding areas. Again, we did this trip with 5th grade. After the play we went to the park to play for a little while before lunch. We at lunch at Grump's (a burger joint in town). Lunch was DELICIOUS! After lunch, we went to the Hay Maze at the Stephenville Christian School. Let me just say, this was the BEST part of the field trip, in my opinion. This Hay Maze was A-MAZE-ING! (haha..) The maze was 2-3 BIG squarebales high and was probably 1/2 the size of a football field. It was very impressive and we had a great time. Mrs. Champeau and I hid in some of the parts of the maze and jumped out and scared the kids... that was fun. The kids just couldn't get enough of the maze and wanted to do it over and over and over. I don't blame them because I wanted to do the same thing. After we left the maze we went back to the park to kill time before heading back to school. I would have to say the day was a fun-filled success. It was a good, last-day of 4th grade.

Student Teaching-- Week 4

Week 4... it just really doesn't seem like it's only been 4 weeks and that it's already been 4 weeks!!

This week we finished up working on our Texas Indians research project AND we did the presentations. The kids did great and I am so proud of them!

On Thursday, I had to go to Tarleton to an ESP (Effect Schools Project) Conference. The speaker was Spencer Henry (http://www.shenrypie.com/). Spencer Henry was an amazing speaker and I am so lucky I got to hear him speak. He spoke about classroom management and had some great ideas and suggestions for the classroom.

On Friday, I had the chance to implement some of the strategies I had learned and it was fun to see the outcome.

Overall this week was really awesome. The students worked on their Dioramas of their Indian group (I'll post pictures soon). My class is such a hands-on class which is PERFECT because I am such a hands-on person. I don't think I could have been placed with a better class to do my student teaching. There are a few challenges with talking and whatnot (but that's to be expected in every classroom) but the good times outweigh the bad... which is how it should be. I'm exicted every day to go to school and teach those kiddos and I love having fun laughing and joking with them! They have such a great sense of humor!!

Student Teaching-- Week 3

WHAT?!?!?!?!? It doesn't seem like it's only been three weeks. In some ways it seems like I have been doing this A LOT longer than 3 weeks and in some ways I'm thinking "where in the world did the time go???". It has been a great experience and I am sooo excited to get in to my own classroom and get this started!!

Right now, we are in the middle of our Texas Indian Unit and the students are having a BLAST (well.. most of them). This is the first research project the students have ever done, and to be honest some of them are blowing me away with their work ethic and determination and creativity. I put the students in pairs and gave each pair a tribe to research (when they heard they were going to research, they were NOT excited). They had to find 10 characteristics (that blew them away), what environment their tribe lived in, how they used their environment, their social envrionment (chief, interaction with other tribes), and interesting facts. Then they had to take ALL of that information and put it in to a PowerPoint presentation. I had to teach them how to use PowerPoint and they caught on REALLY QUICK. My mentor teacher and I were BOTH super impressed with how quickly the students got it. After the PowerPoint, the students had to make a book with all of their information. In their book they had to put the info from their PowerPoint and draw pictures to go with their pages. This was really fun for some students in the class because there are some pretty talented artists in our class. Tomorrow we are going to start our dioramas of the envrionment. These kids have never seen or heard of a diorama before so they are in for a REAL treat!

Overall, I'm having a BLAST. I start Kindergarten in 6 weeks and I hope it's as fun as 4th grade!

Student Teaching-- Week 2

This week has gone pretty well. The talking is still a little bit of a problem but it is MUCH better than last week. The students are all really funny, and for the most part, get along with each other. There are a few cliques but nothing too bad. This week I taught Social Studies again and I am slowly taking Math as the next subject. This coming week I might teach math everyday... maybe. I have my first observation on the 10th during Math, so I should probably practice.

Teaching isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I expected to be really nervous and not explain things clearly, but the students are getting it and their grades reflect it. Even though most things are review right now, it still feels good to see the 100s on the papers I grade. Yesterday we made thermometers in Science and it was so neat to see the kids get excited about learning. They thought it was so neat to see the thermometers in action (I thought it was pretty neat too!).

Next week I start teaching my unit. I'm doing a Social Studies unit on the Native Texas Indians. I'm really excited about it and I hope the students will be too! I'm going to divide the class in to pairs and each pair will research a tribe then creat a PowerPoint, book and diorama about the tribe and present it to the class. I can't wait to see what the students come up with... I'm sure the dioramas and PowerPoints are going to turn out really neat. We have some really creative and VERY artistic students in our class.

Today all of the student teachers were back at Tarleton for PDAS training. It was a little boring but I learned a lot of GREAT information I need to know for when I become a teacher. After the training, we had a surprise babyshower for one of our fellow student teachers, Sheree. She was so surprised! It was a lot of fun!!

I'm looking forward to next week... I'm anxious to see what stories I will have to post by Friday about the research unit!!

Student Teaching-- Week 1

This has been a CRAZY and really fun week. 4th graders are so funny and VERY social (lol). The first day of school I was numb to the feeling that I was begining my student teaching adventure. It was so surreal that I didn't feel any kind of emotion... I mean I was excited and nervous but I didn't have the butterflies in my stomache or anything... but I did a few days later. On day 1 all 19 warm bodies were in their chairs ready to begin a new school year. Since I am student teaching at a VERY small school (190 students in the ENTIRE district), the teachers already know EVERY student's name. The atmosphere of the classroom was pretty inviting and comfortable because the students already knew the teacher and the teacher already knew the students. We only had 2 new students and they didn't waste any time jumping in to the class conversations. In our class we only have 7 boys and 12 girls... and by Tuesday, there was a major talking problem... with the BOYS!! Who would have ever thought the boys would be getting in trouble for talking?!? We nipped the talking problem in the bud pretty quick... by Wednesday the class had to write the definition for "chatter" out of the dictionary as punishment for excessive talking. Thursday was MUCH better and Friday was pretty good too.

On Thursday I taught the DOL and Social Studies lessons. I was more nervous teaching the lessons with my mentor teacher, Mrs. Champeau, in the classroom than I was about actually teaching. There's just something about teaching in front of another adult. I kept thinking "am i doing this right?", "is this making any sense?" i guess i did pretty well because DOL went fine and most of the students made a 100 on their Social Studies assignment. The Social Studies lesson was kind of rocky and not as organized as I would have liked it to be but I fixed that for Friday's lesson... which was about latitude and longitude (not my strongest areas). I haven't graded those assignments yet but as I was walking around, everyone seemed to be getting it... so that's a good thing. I guess the first subject I'm going to be taking over is Social Studies and I am totally OK with that. Next week I am teaching a Math lesson on Thursday and I'm a little nervous about it. Luckily it's mostly review AND it is a short lesson. I have my first observation on the 8th with my supervisor and it is during a Math lesson... so I figured I should get some practice before the big show.

My schedule has been pretty crazy... I've been getting up around 6:15 every morning and getting in to bed before 9pm pretty much every night. I feel like such an old lady but by the end of the day I am just exhausted and ready to sleep.

I'm looking forward to this next week of student teaching. Now that we have routines down and we are getting to know our class schedule, hopefully this next week will go smoother than the first!

Monday- Day 1 and Tuesday- Day 2 of In-Service

Day 1: This day went pretty well. During the morning session we had Kathy Smith as our speaker. She spoke to us about using visuals in the classroom and gave us some really great ideas for hands-on activities. After that session, a group of us went to lunch and chatted about anything and everything. It was great to get to sit and just chat with the teachers. They are all really nice and I'm looking forward to being "one of them" (almost) this Fall. After lunch we had some time to work in the room and get things a little organized. The hall theme for this year is "Under the Sea" and I just have to say, our display is AWESOME! I drew a submarine and we decorated with ocean-backdrop paper and ocean-y cut outs. It's really cute:



After a while of working on the room we went to the computer lab for a Webinar on how to use the new textbooks (Huckabay adopted new ELA textbooks this year). The textbooks have some really great activities and ideas as well as great extensions online. I'm excited about getting to teach from that book.


Day 2: This day started off kind of rough. My car wouldn't start (battery died) so I had to call my school and let them know I was going to be running late (perfect that my battery was dead on the second day-- at least it wasn't the first day!). I called my roommate to come home from work and jump my car. I also called my dad (because they know EVERYTHING!) and he told me to jump it and head to Autozone after school. Luckily it was only my battery and my car started with some help and I was off to Huckabay. I got there right at 9 (when the workshop started... I was supposed to be there at 8:45). There was an email training (the school got a new email service) and then a District Improvement Plan group discussion session. I thought it was really neat that the teachers were involved in the process of editing and giving their input on the District Improvement Plan... I had no idea teachers were involved in that process... it makes sence and I'm glad I got to sit in on that discussion. After that meeting we all went and had lunch again and then spent the rest of the afternoon working on the classrooms. My teacher and I spent most of our time working on our hallway display:



And this is the Kindergarten hall display... I thought it was REALLY neat and that's wehre I'm going to be doing my student teaching for my second placement (I think... we're still trying to figure that one out).

Recent Happenings

On Saturday, Craig and I began our registery at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and we had a lot of fun! Craig had the scanner and he was having a blast... however, when we got home there were some silly things on the registery that came off. lol. After we registered (3 hours later), we ate lunch at Fudrucker's and then ordered our wedding bands from Jared's. I'm really excited to get the ball rolling on our wedding. So far we have the venue (for wedding and recpetion), cake, caterer, and a few more things. I'm glad we're getting an early start... I don't want us to be stressed the day of the wedding. This weekend we are going to talk to a travel agency about honeymoons and I'm really excited about that.

In other news, my summer is coming to a close; babysitting ends next thursday and student teaching orientation is on the 13th. Then I start inservice on the 16th and school starts on the 23rd. I'll be in full swing before I know it and then I'll be graduated!! I can't believe it's already here and I am so ready for it.

It is bittersweet that my time in Stephenville is coming to a close. I'm going to try to make my last semester my most fun semester. We already have a list of fun things we want to do this fall and hopefully we can get a lot of the list marked off! I told myself I'm going to be more adventurous this semester and not say "no" to fun opportunities just because I want to stay home. My first adventure is going to a Ranger's game with my brother and his family. I'm really looking forward to it. It's a great way to end the summer and begin my last chapter of my college career!