Lesson Learned

I’m terrible at blogging…. I feel like there is not even a moment to spare. But here I am trying to type away.

Yesterday I finally got to make some money substituting! Yay! It was the first time I was without Mrs. Christensen all day. It was really weird. I was so afraid that I was going to forget to take them to specials, or forget to pick them up at recess. Things however did go okay… We ended up doing tests all day anyway, so it really was an easy day lesson plans wise. They had their reading assessment in the morning, and while they were assessing I had to test students on fluency (done weekly).  All but one student got all the way through their assessments.  In the afternoon we had a math assessment, and I had planned to do a Jeopardy game to review. It was getting pretty late though by the time we checked our homework. I thought about just nixing the  game and going straight to the assessment but I was worried that they wouldn’t do as well without it. Well…. Lesson learned, I should have followed my gut feeling.  By the time i stopped the game (even though we only spent 10 minutes on it), we only had 35 minutes left before they had to go to music. A lot of the students had to come back after specials and try to finish up before the bell rang. Because of this, some of  the slower students felt rushed, and it was hectic when the bell did ring.

I haven’t graded their reading assessment yet, I wonder how they did? We made little stick puppets and split into two groups to practice performing it, so I am curious if this styling of reading the story affected some differently.

I did grade the math tests. and I’ve found that it is a little depressing sometimes to grade.  A lot of the students did pretty bad. I’m thinking that part of the reason for this is because everyone has been so sick. We’ve had about half of our class missing at least 2 days of the 5 days this last week, and every day after that at least 5 students absent. Not necessarily the same students either. I’m fighting to stay healthy.

Thursday Mrs Christensen brought brownies and pink lemonade for my birthday. All of the students were so excited. It was super cute. I got all of these little birthday notes, and one student even gave me an acorn!

Classroom management still frustrates me, they really are not that bad, but still they are less talkative while Mrs. Christensen is teaching and I wonder what I am doing differently?

I’ve been trying a couple of things, but I could always use some more suggestions. There is one student in particular that craves attention. Threats of refocusing or detention doesn’t phase him because he tells me that he wants a refocus or detention. I don’t know what to do with him.

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