Repeating a Grade.

It always amazes me how everytime I walk into the classroom they are doing something a little different. It usually has to do with reading or writing of some sort but I really have no idea what kind of activity I'm going to be joining. This time I walked into the teacher giving the students a movie to watch and having them answer questions about the movie, which I think is pretty cool. After she finished explaining to me a little about what is going on she left the room to do some copies or something and left me alone with the kids, telling me to give out small hints about what question they are on. I had no idea what to do, it was dark and I couldn't really make out what the questions were and I didn't want to distract the kids, so besides re-reading the questions for some of the kids I didn't do much. Its kinda adorable how easily the kids will laugh though, in the video a kid missed catching a frog and fell in a pond and the entire room was roaring with laughter at something so simple. For the rest of the day I really only graded papers and entered them into the grade book. I always have questions on how to grade some of the answers so I keep bothering my teacher and I feel bad. We talked about one of the kids who is probably going to have to repeat the 1st grade, she has a D-, in first grade! I feel bad for her because she is really sweet, but as Ive been grading her papers i know that she does need more help. But for the rest of the day I just graded more papers, I really love my teacher I made a mistake on all the papers for one of the tests and she was okay with it and just had me redo it. Next time is Halloween and I'm super excited, all the kids were telling me about their costumes and crowding around me as I left, I felt like a celebrity.

How would you deal with this?

For this weeks field placement I mostly spent my time observing and grading papers, but there were some highlights to my day. The first hour I was there I was sitting in the back watching the teacher help the kids find short "i" words like fin and fish. She had them find them in a giant book then come up and circle them, she also had them find "pumpkin chunks" in the book which are letters that combine to make new sounds like "th" and "sh". She even had a little rhyme to go with it. All the kids were really engaged and even those that were misbehaving quickly stopped when she told them. She also helped get them to stay quiet by only choosing the quietest and stillest kids to answer the questions, by the end all of them had gone at least once. Afterwards I had to stay behind with one of the kids while everyone else was going to lunch because she had a dentist appointment she was so cute because as we were waiting she showed me around the classroom telling me about all the different things they have, and she gave me a little paper finger puppet. During lunch I ate in the classroom and all the other teachers came in to talk about lesson plans, it was really awkward because sometimes they would go off topic (like for a while they were talking about how hot Johnny Depp is) and I didn't want to seem like I was eavesdropping. Then I graded papers, I was really careful not to make any mistakes, but I'm always worried that I grade differently than how she would so I end up asking her a lot of questions. After the kids came back we learned that one of the girls had an accident, her mom came to pick her up and I just stood around awkwardly because I didn't know if I should be listening to the conversation between the teacher and mom. Then we went to the nurses office and I once again stood around awkwardly while they discussed this girl because this has been happening for the past two days.This kind of situation is something I have no idea how to deal with, but I'm going to have to learn eventually. After that I helped give some tests for some kids who missed it. My day was great and a little weird, but by far the best part was when one of the girls came up to me and said she liked my dress, also everyone saying goodbye to me. I really love this classroom.

Fall Break

It was fall break so I didn't have field placement. Insead I went home and hung out with my sisters, went shopping and played the new pokemon game. I also got to hang out with my best friend. We spent the entire night watching anime and generally having fun with each other. I really did not do much else.

The first normal day

So I finally got to have my second week of field placement, and the first time I got to observe what a normal class is like. It was pretty close to what I expected. The second I walked in to the classroom I was attacked by three children giving me hugs. I really didn't know what to do so I just gave them a little pat on the back or head. I was immediately put to work helping kids with their math activity, when a bit of an awkward situation came up. I was doing my rounds around the classroom when this young boy started telling me of his Halloween costume of an army guy, I said some generic positive things about it and Halloween in general while trying to get him to focus on his work when he said that he was going to bring a gun and knife in to go with his costume. I was shocked and tried to explain to him why that wasn't a very good idea and how it might get him into trouble but I don't think he understood. Afterword I watched my teacher go through a reading paper. I like how she reads every question but makes the kids find out the answer. I noticed how she never says anything negative if she calls on a kid and the kid doesn't know the answer she has them call on a friend to help them out. I walked around the room taking notes and observing what was going on and I help correct a kid, I really hope I'm not overstepping my boundaries or being distracting to the students. After the reading exercise she read the kids a story, while teaching them about predicting. She keeps asking the kids to explain to me what the previous lessons were about, like she asked the class to explain to me what it ment to predict things. I really like that, as I hadn't thought about teaching like that. After the story it was lunch time and I ate in a classroom with all the other 1st grade teachers. I felt really awkward but it was interesting to me how they spent most of the lunch period  discussing lesson plans and the like. They even got excited about finding things on Pintrest and finds at local stores. After lunch I spent a while grading papers and helped a kid makeup a test. But by far the best part of my day came right afterward when I got to read the kids a story. It was so much fun, I did voices for all the characters. Mrs. Kieffer seems to be a really good teacher, she really knows her students and which ones need a little extra help and which ones are fine. She answers their questions and when someone starts going off of the lesson, like when some of the kids started talking about her birthday she gives them answers while pushing them back on topic, it's one of those things I didn't think about needing to learn how to do when I become a teacher.