September Student Teaching

I've already been Student Teaching for six weeks now! Time is flying by. I had a reality check yesterday with how close I am to graduating. My Mom called me to ask me about graduation announcements after I had sat down my cooperating teacher and outlined my plans for the next two months. A little stressed and a little overwhelmed. BUT!

I'm still very happy and I have learned so much. It's amazing how many ideas and resources I feel like I have already came across. Pinterest has been my best friend while planning my lessons. I don't know what I'd do without it!

I've been teaching a lot of Grammar Skills with the third graders. I started by teaching them to identify sentences as a statement, a question, a command, or an exclamation. For this activity, the students made an inner circle and outer circle. The inner circle students had different example sentences and the outer circle had their whiteboard and dry erase marker. The students worked with partners to identify the different sentences as fast as they could.

I also taught the students to identify and create a sentence with a simple subject and simple predicate. I found an idea on Pinterest to make a Grammar Flipbook/Foldable. I shared the idea with my cooperating teacher and now all three of the third grade classes are going to try it. One thing that is amazing at the school is the teachers collaborate together on everything! They work really well together. I can only hope to get into a situation like that my first few years! Hopefully the foldables help the kids learn and understand the skill! 

I made all of the teachers an example one.

Sorted the labels and definitions.

The students wrote their own sentence, underlined the subject and circled the predicate. I remember practicing this is third grade!

They also placed an X under the simple subject and simple predicate. We had them write their answer on a whiteboard before copying it to the grammar flipbook. We use our whiteboards for everything! So useful.

I'm in the midst of planning my unit which will cover solving subtraction problems with four digit numbers with and without regrouping. I feel like I'll be learning with the kids, what I have to do a lot of the time! They learn Math a completely different way than I had learned it growing up. It would have been so much more beneficial for students to learn the conceptual way. I'm collaborating with another Student Teacher for my unit which is perfect, we already have some great ideas.

Halloween is right around the corner and we started decorating! I'm teaching two Art lessons this week and today we made witches and spiders to hang up in our room. They added a lot to the room, too cute! The kids loved it too.

Some of our spiders.

Our witches.

Definitely going to do this when I get my own classroom.

We hung them up all through the classroom. It was quite the process but two hours later, they were all up! All three of the third grade classrooms have them up successfully :)

September has been a great month. I can't wait for October with my kiddos.

Student Teaching

First Two Weeks of Student Teaching

These past three weeks have been very busy and exciting! I started Student Teaching in Mrs. Ekart's Third Grade class at Lee Elementary. I am so lucky to have Mrs. Ekart as a cooperative teacher. She is a great role model and very supportive. Everyone has been so friendly and helpful at Lee and I'm really looking forward to this semester.
These first two weeks have been busy. We are getting to know the students and going over rules of the classroom and school. A teacher that Mrs. Ekart collaborates with went to a workshop over Kagan Cooperative Learning and has been introducing us to it. Kagan activities are all about engagement and key into teambuilding. I plan on using these resources in my future classroom! 

The students drew a self portrait and wrote about themselves. It was a great first sample of their writing and it was great to be able to put their work up in our classroom.

This is the front of a folded piece of paper. The students answered questions about themselves and when you lifted it up, there was a picture of them. Fun way to find out the students interests.

The room looks amazing with all of the students' work hanging up.

She is so artistic.

This is the students' "Look Back At Summer." They wrote about something fun they did this summer and illustrated them in inside the sunglasses.

We did a lot with Arthur the second week of school. The students were able to learn how to draw him. They were really good!

This was one of the Kagan teambuilding activities. The students are in groups of four. Two students get a glue stick and two students get a crayon. Every student two pieces of paper of their color. The students make a clown without touching any materials but their own. They also can't use scissors. They work together to come up with a plan then work together to make a clown.

Our "Guess Who" bulletin board outside of the classroom.

Our "Math About Me" activities showing that math is all around them every day.

The finished clowns. The groups got to name their clown. The students were really creative and had a lot of fun!

We got the classroom ready for Parent Teacher conferences by tracing all of the students and letting them color them like themselves. We taped them to their seats with a ruler. This was very time consuming but turned out really cute. It was fun seeing the parents try to find their kids based on how they colored themselves.