So today was my second to last day doing my student teaching. My cooperating teacher still hadn’t gotten to the ocean unit because she forgot about Mother’s Day, but I was still able to do one of my lessons. I read a book about ocean animals and had the students write sentences about an animal they saw at the ocean. If they never saw an animal at the ocean they made it up. The illustrations came out pretty cute and their spelling is getting much better. Although, I am still unsure of when I am supposed to correct their spelling and when I leave it alone. My teacher said that if the word isn’t on the Word Wall we can correct them, but there a lot of the words used in their writing activities that aren’t on the wall.
Anyway, other than that the students worked on their Mother’s Day letters. They wrote a rough draft yesterday and today they wrote their final copies on a letter template. Some of them were so funny! They were thanking their moms for things such as getting them to school on time or cooking for them. I got a real kick out of them. Tomorrow they will put the letters onto construction paper and finish them up. I can’t wait to see what the final project looks like. I look forward to doing holiday activities with my future students, but I am a little confused as to where I draw the line between arts and crafts and school work. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that I came from teaching preschool.
Next week I will finish up with my last two lessons, the one I am VERY excited for. It’s called “Friendly Fish” and it goes along with the book The Rainbow Fish that I mentioned. The other activity is a jellyfish addition lesson, but I have to change it because the ones I made were too small and I want them to work with addition problems between 1 and 20. So I will take home some paper and get that squared away for next week. Other than that I am both happy and sad about the semester coming to an end. Happy because I will have a nice break and can sleep in, but sad that I won’t get to see their faces anymore. They have a trip planned for the end of the year, but I will be in Greece on my honeymoon so I can’t make it. I will definitely make sure to come visit before the school year ends though.
Well, the kids are in lunch and then off to gym and I have to do some stuff around the classroom while I have a minute to myself. Until next time!
jen's world 