Week 7

The past week I added shared reading to my teaching list. At first, I was very nervous but I just went with the flow. I think one of the most diffcult tasks was the singing. I do not know all the songs and so at some points I just let Dr. Jean sing them and chimed in with the kids. In addition to the songs, I was also supposed to have done "Mary Wore a Red Dress." I don't know if it was me or what but there was never enough time to do it. I often found myself running over time without doing it. Well maybe this week, I will be more time efficient. As the week wore on, I think I improved and felt more confident with what I was doing. I think that is how this semester is going to go, everything will get easier and I will feel more comfortable with time.

This week in math for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; I did glyphs. On monday, we made our glyphs. We did this as a step by step process and I think it went well. It focused on identifying shapes and colors. It also worked with developing motor skills because they had to cut and glue. On Tuesday, we made graphs about the data represented on our glyphs. Wednesday, we studied and interpreted our graphs and talked about ordinate numbers. Also on Wednesday, I attempted to have students read the glyphs for information. An example of a question would be "Who was born in October? They have a red square nose." Some students had no trouble while others could not grasp the concept. I think that it would probably work better later in the year. Overall I felt that the three days of glyphs went extremely well. I really feel confident in how I approached doing it and also understand that there are areas that probably could have gone smoother. On my Thursday math lesson, we did patterns. Ashley had been doing patterns all week with her kindergarten and had mentioned that they were having difficulties, so I assumed the worst of my class. Well to my surprise almost all the children did a good job. I did not intend to introduce ABB patterns but because AB patterns went well I thought it would be ok and not too challenging for the students. I would be correct. I am sure it is not solid in their minds but I will be working with patterns for most of this week.

I started the second week of my action research this week as well. This week I introduced the paired discussion part of my AR. Currently there seems to be no significant difference in the student responses. It is only week two, so there is plenty more data to collect and evaluate.

Next week, I begin fulltime teaching. I feel a little nervous because I feel like not all the students look at me as a teacher or at least as the teacher in charge. I plan on trying to work this out this week. Be firm and gain control.