Following the morning meeting came Science and it went extremely well. I had the students finish taking notes on the properties of matter that they had started yesterday and since this wasn't going to take up the entire hour of science, I decided to have the students do a "Show What You Know". I told them in their science notebooks to pick any object and to tell me all of its properties. I modeled and drew an apple. I wrote its color, shape, texture, size and hardness. I then had the students write about their object and its properties. I had them write a paragraph that must have a topic sentence, transition words, and a conclusion sentence. They really enjoyed using what they have learned to draw an object of interest and write about it. After science was over, I had them put their science notebooks on my desk to be graded.
Math came after science and it too went very well. I was teaching halving today and used a Promethean lesson to teach this concept. I had my students make GET charts for each problem I presented, G-what is my group E- what is my number in each group, T-what is my total? Then I had my students make arrays for each problem and write a matching division equation. After a few problems and having the students come up to the Promethean to make their array or write out their equation, I went back to my essential question and asked, "How is halving represented by division?" They noticed the problems they had been doing and were able to figure out that halving is like dividing by two. To help my students remember this concept, I made up a rhyme and hand gestures to go along with it. The students were respectful, engaged, and eager to learn for the whole duration of math.
Then came MTSS, during this half hour in the computer lab, I walked around and made sure my students stayed on task and that they were clicking fastly through any lesson on the computer. After the computer lab, we came back to the classroom and took our ERT (vocabulary) test. I am always in charge of administering this test, so the students were use to the drill. T
I was hoping after lunch, my students wouldn't be all wound up because usually they are able to go play and eat outside, but since I was a substitute, I wasn't able to take them outside for lunch. When lunch was over, I left the teacher's lounge, where I was grading papers and when I got my students, my three personality dominant boys all were upset by being yelled at by the lunch lady. As we walked back into the classroom, I thought quickly on my toes of how I was going to handle the situation, I had one boy crying and two boys visible angry about what had happened in the lunch room. When the students got back into class, I had everyone put their heads down. I was not going to start our performance task because I could see some of my students were flustered by the lunch chaos. I decided to address to the class that I'm not sure what happened today at lunch and that I didn't want to know because it is over with and we are going to move on from it. I said let's all just put our heads down on our desk, cool off, and enjoy a read aloud. I read the book, Pancakes for Supper, the students were extremely engaged, quiet, but their eyes could not be taken off the story I was telling. My read aloud was not only full of expression, but I was using body language, creating voices for characters, and truly making my students get lost in this book. It was the perfect transition they needed before focusing on taking an hour long performance task.
After the read aloud, I explained thanked them for their behavior up until this point and how my CT will love to hear the report I'm going to give her if we can continue our good behavior through reading.
I explained the performance task and how they were able to use their notes to compare to the essential message of two texts they had read. I was so pleased that for the full hour my students were working quietly and extremely hard to get this performance down to the best of their ability. I reminded them to use their topic sentences, transitions, and conclusion sentence. After the performance task was over, it was independent reading time and that is how the day went.
I had no behavior issues, I did have to take a couple student's points, but they were minor issues. I was extremely pleased with how well my students behaved. The only problems really came during line procedures with students talking and trying to walk by their friends instead of in ABC order. To address the problem, I stopped my line and had to get firm with my students that we know the line procedures, we know where we stand and what our order is, and I waited until my students were in ABC order and quiet and facing forward. They got the idea very quickly and that was the end of that issue.
Coming into today, I kept thinking to myself that I am not ready to be a teacher, but after today, I realized I'm a lot more prepared than I thought I was.