Week 7

Week 7: Full week of teaching and Mainely Voices Assembly!

This week was the week that I took over my mentor teacher's classroom for the whole week. We did some team teaching, but it was up to me to keep track of time (for some much needed practice with it) and teach/oversee most of the lessons this week. Since we had snow days the week before break, we had our Valentine's Day celebration and we celebrated the 100th day of school on Monday. The kids decorated their Valentine bags and passed out their Valentines to each other. I got some nice ones too! :)

"You are the beast of the best teachers" (and yes, he really meant to say "beast")

For our 100th day of school celebration we did some fun activities, one of them being a math packet that I put together for everyone which included some fun math activities involving the number 100. After that, we did this hysterical activity in which the kids wrote about what they thought they would be like when they are 100 years old... and we took a picture of them and used an app called "Make Me Old" so they could see themselves with wrinkles and facial hair (and I was surprised at how many of the girls were excited to see themselves with a mustache... I love it.)

Also this week, the students continued working on their Non-Fiction owl poems during Writing Workshop time and we had an effective system going. The kids independently got right to work and I met with individual students who needed a teacher conference before writing their final drafts. They wrote their names on the board under one of the following categories depending on which stage they were currently at. 

The students knew what the sequence of the workshop was and it was a way to keep them aware of what they were to be doing at that time (and so they weren't interrupting me while I was conferencing to ask what to do next.) It was also a way for me to keep track of what everyone was currently working on, who was finished, and who needed extra help.

After they were finished, my mentor teacher, Mrs. White, helped videotape the students presenting their poems and then I hung their final pieces along with their artwork in the hall for everyone to enjoy. We will be watching the video recordings as a class. That concludes my unit, and I couldn't be more proud! All that is left is a performance next week for the other second graders singing "What Does the Owl Say?" (I will definitely be recording this gem.)

View the videos of their poem presentations here!

Here is my first official bulletin board... I put it all up by myself! (I'm a big kid now.) The students did an awesome job, didn't they??

Something else exciting happened this week... the a cappella group I am part of at UMaine, Mainely Voices, came to Asa Adams Elementary! I led a mini a cappella workshop for my "Service to the School" project and talked about the different voice parts and what makes a cappella music unique. We performed a few songs and it was a blast... plus I got to practice my crowd control ;). The students were in awe, and I felt like a rock star leaving school that day! I can't thank the members of MV enough for taking time out of their busy schedules to help make this possible. The good thing is, I know it was rewarding for everyone. Nobody can look up to you the way an elementary schooler can (and I mean that both literally and figuratively).