Monday 23 Jan

could someone please explain to me why kids have to read books that are on their 'dot'? Thinking back to elementary school, I can't recall having to read a book that was my 'color'. I remember being able to read whatever I bloody well wanted to read. I was encouraged to start reading Mark Twain in the 3rd grade. By the time I was in the 5th grade, I was reading Stephen King and the Catcher in the Rye. (I know, this says a lot about the way I act now :-p ) Now, according to the AR and RC, Twain, Salanger, and all those other authors are high school material. When did Curious George become 2nd grade reading material? I don't get this. Shouldn't kids be encouraged to read for 'pleasure', not because they have to?

Friday

I finally got to teach my first two lessons. I did a spelling test and I taught math using M&M’s. Spelling was okay. I felt I did an okay job with that. Math, however, please shoot me now. Most of the students followed directions, but the ones who did not really messed the project up and could not understand why they messed up. I thought it was really very simple to say: “Don’t open your baggie until you have a paper towel.” Apparently, I need to give out the towels before I give out the baggies full of M&M’s. Another way I would improve this lesson is the wording. I would have used some different terminology. Instead of saying what is the difference between what you guessed and how many M&M’s were in the bag, I would have said if you guessed more M&M’s, how many more did you guess. If you guessed fewer, how many more were in the bag. Another improvement that I would have done would have been to take a baggie around and have the students write down how many M&M’s they thought were in the bag and then give each student a bag to count. Instead of that, I gave them a bag and told them to guess. That was a bad mistake on my part. Now, I know what to do. I asked the kids if they liked using M&M’s to count and all of them did. I think their favorite part was eating the M&M’s. One aspect I remembered: some kids might be allergic to peanuts, so I used plain M&M’s. I was so proud of myself for remembering this at Wal-Mart last night.

Thursday

I sat in on an SST meeting. I’d never sat in on one and did not realize that the entire grade sat in on one student’s meeting. In looking through the entire SST manual, I was completely and totally lost. After sitting in on the meeting yesterday, I felt much better about understanding some of the manual. For Dr. Ponder’s class, we have to find a student and do an informal SST type assessment. We had a meeting about the student I am going to observe and I found out a lot about what I need to look for, what I need to do, and possibly how to handle it. I really want to be a special education teacher and this helped me tremendously. I’m learning what to look for, not just a possible sign of something being wrong. This SST meeting really opened my eyes for what teachers actually do to help a child with special needs.

12 January

This morning, my teacher explained everything that happened, so now I know why she was so surprised when I asked if there was something I could do to help. Today, I offered to help get a few certian students ready for the bloody CRCT and she accepted the help without hesitation. It's nice to feel wanted :)

13 January

TGIF!! I've never been so blessed happy to see the weekend. Now, I can go out, have an intelligent conversation, and not have to worry about smelling like smoke. I've never wanted a cigarette so bloody much in my life. These kids are going to drive me bonkers if I hear "Kristina Sisson" one more time. AUGH!! Can't they just call me Ms. S?

18 Jan

Getting much better :) I'm not so lost feeling now. I think I can wait until May to move instead of last week. She has made me feel much more at ease and she's letting me interact more with the students, which makes me happy.

Tuesday 10 January

Today was an interesting day. The high point of my day was that I got an honest to G-d teacher's desk. I walked around and really felt like the proverbial bump on the log. It's not looking too good yet :-(

11-1-06

Hi :) Welcome to my brand-new blog that I have created for my educational responses.