A Week Full of Adventures

I would rate this week a 5 once again. I had a planning day Monday, which was nice to be able to write some lesson plans and get my classroom ready for the week. I had my 4^th observation Tuesday,  and the students had a fun-filled day with Halloween activities and party on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday I got to experience "real life teaching." Thursday one of the kindergarten teachers was sick so her TA was subbing. The TA had to take care of a student who had an accident so I did morning meeting and phonics with 44 students. On Friday both my CE and my TA were out so it was just myself in the class all day. The other staff was awesome and supportive, and asked multiple times throughout the day if I needed anything.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much our parents are involved in the classroom. 20/23 students brought in different snacks, drinks, goodie bags, or utensils for our Halloween party. We also had four parents come in to help and be with their children for the party. This week when students struggled with their letters, we would review them the next day in daily 5. This has been helpful to the students, so I will continue this pattern in the following weeks. My long-term goal of classroom management is coming together with my short-term efforts of adding different ways for faster transitions. I could have spent more time working on parts of my portfolio, but I did lesson plans and job applications instead. The first logical steps for next week, is to complete my lesson plans and work on my portfolio.

The data I analyzed are my students’ phonics, math, and sight words, which helped me plan for my next week’s lesson. I know the students who are struggling with their letters, the ones who still need help with their sight words, and the students who are struggling with writing their letters backwards. We also had the least amount of students pass their sights words that we have had in the past three weeks. I believe it is because we only had Daily 5 centers twice this week because of Halloween and the planning day, which goes to show that the students are learning in their centers. The piece of advice I would share with the other student teachers is to finish these last two weeks strong!

NCPTS

This week I increased in standard 1a by being more specific and consistent with proximity praise, which is demonstrating teacher leadership. I increased in standard 2b by integrating culture into my lesson plans. I increased in standard 3a by effectively integrating literacy into lesson plans daily. I increased in standard 4d by meeting with my CTE to discuss different ways to include technology in my lessons. I also had a lesson in the computer lab on Thursday where students were all working on computers practicing their letter recognition on a keyboard since they have been struggling with that. I increased in 5a by analyzing students’ data each day and adjusting my plans according to students needs.

This week I added to my parent communication for my portfolio, my PDP data, and continued videoing in class. Both my CE and myself are all set right now.