Day 2 - A Bit of Clarity

Ah, today was much better than yesterday! It was so much easier to "see the forest through the trees", if you will. Yesterday I was so overwhelmed by all the details that it was difficult to see the underlying structure of the classroom. Part of the reason for this was because of an unfamiliar Language Arts Program. My HT uses a guided reading program which encompasses Reading, Writing, and Language Studies. Social Studies and Science are also often integrated in these areas because there is very little time left for these subjects. Students spend at least an hour every day reading various genres, an hour writing, and nearly an hour doing other language activities. There are also homogeneous guided reading groups, heterogeneous literature groups, and whole-class traybook studies. At any one time, every student is reading at least three books. The great thing about all of this is that the students actually love to read and get excited about it! Today during Community Meeting (all the kids gather on the carpet and the HT talks about upcoming books/events/projects) the HT brought out the Weekly Readers as well as the newspaper from today. I have never in my life seen ten-year-olds actually fight over a newspaper! It's inspiring.

Today I also got to work one-on-one with several students. The class is just finishing up long division, and there are a few students who really struggle with it, so I did a few extra problems with those students. I also read aloud with a couple students to help improve their fluency. I really enjoyed working with the kids, especially once I loosened up a bit. I have a few (okay, many) things to improve upon, but I'm at least starting to feel comfortable in the classroom. I still need to working on gaining confidence, but I think that will come with time and experience.

Looking toward the future, my HT and I are starting to plan for my first lessons that I'll be teaching. I'm going to start with Science and History, as those are the subjects that are least involved in this classroom. My first observation is in two short weeks, which seems entirely overwhelming at this point!