Only 2 more weeks left before I hit the half-way point in my student teaching experience. I am excited to see what opportunities I will be able to experience in my last 2 weeks in my primary resource position. I can’t wait to get in the Kindergarten classroom and be able to teach more lessons daily and weekly then I am now. Honestly, I am looking forward to writing lesson plans and being able to reflect on my teaching skills more.
Since I have only been in the classroom for a short amount of period, I really have not had too many opportunities to experience classroom management. With the handful of lessons that I have taught I have done really good with classroom management. I am looking forward to getting in the Kindergarten classroom to be able to gain more experience with classroom management.
This week’s experiences have been some great rare opportunities for a student teacher even though it was a short week due having a four day weekend for Presidents Day and a Staff Development Day. On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to lead the Special Education Department at my school and a few people from another school’s Special Education Department in a Staff Development Day training. My training was about charting behavior and academic data using Microsoft Excel. During the training I had someone record it so that I could include it in my portfolio.
Also on Tuesday, I had the opportunity to work with the Kindergarten department on OWL Writing Scoring and they even invited me to lunch with them. I am not even part of their team yet and they made me feel like I was a part of their team. It just makes me even more excited to work with them and to learn from them.
On Wednesday, I assisted with before-school color guard practice. Those girls are getting so talented. I am going to check and see if I can record a little of their practice. I want to include it in my portfolio, if I can. I am going to check with my cooperating teacher before I record it. Besides, going into the classes to give services to those who receive them, I spent a good portion of the week writing that Annual Review IEP that I started this week. I even found out from my cooperating teacher that she would like me to run the IEP meeting on March 2 as long as the parents don’t mind.
Friday was a pretty exciting morning on campus. My cooperating teacher was supposed to have an initial IEP meeting, but the family didn’t show. During the morning recess the office called for any available teacher to come to the playground for duty, which was pretty unusual. So my cooperating teacher and I went to assist on the playground and I am glad we did because I had the chance to attend another special Sunrise Ceremony. Casey Smith, who anchors Action News This Morning on Las Vegas Channel 13, was at the school to receive the school’s Be Smart, Be Safe Pledges from the Students. (You can click here to find out more about the campaign andto find out how you can get involved.)
I also spent a portion of this week preparing and planning for my next and last formal observation during my Resource student teaching experience. I am teaching an introduction to animal life cycles lesson to the second grade class that I spend most of my day in. This lesson is important because I am starting their unit and my lesson will set the tone for the whole unit. The teacher gave me a copy of the grade level lesson plans and resources so that I have an idea of what the whole second grade is doing. She told me what she wanted to do and what she didn’t want to do, so that I know what to incorporate into my lesson. I will be recording it, because this is one lesson that I want to include in my portfolio.
I also worked on my mid-term self evaluation and I must confess that I am having a hard time evaluating myself in some areas because of my lack of having experienced them. I feel that I should say that I am unsatisfactory, but when I read the description is just doesn’t sound right, because do have a basic understanding of what is required I just haven’t been able to experience them. I know that I can get through it and it has been giving me goals to work toward in my next 8 weeks of things to look out for and work towards.
I am looking forward to my experiences this week and can’t wait to share them with you next week in my weekly reflection.
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