Blog Week 1

Today this week started the my journey to becoming a teacher. It was amazing and more than I could have imagined. This week I observed the start of 2nd grade for the class of Mrs. Krebs. The class spend the week going over expectation and establishing routines. While there was not one particular event that occurred, I observed a lot of great techniques that the helped with classroom management.
The teacher used visuals to remind students, in partner sharing the student closest to the door is mac and the student closest to the wall with the teacher's desk is mac. The student take turn sharing and use the walls to remind themselves whose turn it is to talk. This was important to me because she takes the time to think of small visuals that will help the students and make them fun. One major difference that I noticed this week is the change from my previous experiences. The school is that I have previously worked in focused on SEL. However, it was a hard transition from addressing negative behavior to redirecting with positive behavior expectations. However, Mrs. Krebs does a great job with asking students to follow directions or celebrating student who are on task. This is a habit that I would like to create as well. I also see that the school performs very high, and their low students receive many resources, this will be a change from my previous school as well that was understaff for their resources needs.

One of the best practices that I saw this week was the use of Google Slides. The second grade team really utilizes their team time. They use the time to create and cover the slides for each day. The whole grade uses the same set of slides and modifies the slides so that every student in 2nd grade is on the same page, and has covered the exact same materials and lessons each day. This is a great way to be consistent. It is really awesome for me to have access to these slides to follow along with the lessons and prep with them for assisting for future small groups or discussions. I realized that I need to get a lot more organized with my work if I want to be that prepared. It is something that I want to get better at doing. The work load can get overwhelming, however getting ahead of my lessons is something that I plan to do. I took a math book home over the weekend to study the lessons and make sure I am very familiar with the curriculum. At first I started the week, as just an observer of the class. I spend the beginning of the week talking to the kids and getting to know each other. AS the days went on, I went around the room to spend time with each student, and help with classroom management. The teachers use key cards to give "keys" for good behavior. I have been able to help with that as I walked around the room. This helped the students understand that I am there to help with educating them and also to help with classroom management.

This being the first week, my goal was to try to sit back, observe, and help when the teacher asked me. I believe this was extremely difficult to not jump in and take over. However, it is important for me to balance student TEACHING with STUDENT teaching. I want to learn from my teacher, and being patient while I wait for curriculum to begin so I can truly learn her teaching style. I hope to see a style of teaching, prep or actual teaching, that inspires ideas for my future classroom. I also am excited to see how the passion and ideas are fully put into action. This week my goal is to observe reading groups and hold 2-3 guided reading groups. This week I am hoping to observe the groups and run them by the end of the week.

In Chapter 1, Schmidt talks about multiple intelligences. He also talks about the fact it is problematic for students to get up and move around the class. This to me is also a common misconception. I want to make sure that students get movement breaks at appropriate times in appropriate ways. I hope to be able to make lessons that students can get up and move about the room in ways that can still stay on task. This ties into the next point of the chapter that full learning should go on. Incorporating movement in ways that the brain is still engaged is a vital part of the lessons. One of my goals is to observe this in the classroom over the next couple of weeks, and find great lessons that can do this.