Day 24

I love my students; however I look forward to Fridays. Students leave at 1:25 and we spend the next couple of hours in meetings and training. When those are over then I can focus on the next weeks lessons. By 6 pm on Friday I was ready for Monday and almost ready for Tuesday. This was over an hour earlier than any previous Friday I have stayed late. On a normal day my students leave at 3:25. I spend the first few minutes wrapping up the days activities. I try to get this done by 4 pm. At 4 pm I spend an hour or so catching up on projects that I have delayed, that needs to get done. Finally, around 5 pm I put the touches on the next days activities. This usually takes an hour and a half. My goal is to leave each night by 6:30 p.m.

On Fridays we do spelling tests, followed by the pre-test on the next weeks spelling words. If a student can get 19 out of 20 or higher on the pre-test, that student does not have to complete the next weeks spelling. The first week I had one student that passed the spelling test and this week there were three. This is progress. Next we normally take a math/language art/science or social studies test. However, because we did not complete a unit in any subject this week, my students worked on their LA. We completed our Reading Tutor unit and gave Fluency tests to the students in our two lower reading groups. Finally, we completed the morning by building a salt dough volcano and letting the students complete their volcano art project. The lesson learned from this was I need to insure that the art projects I choose are a little less complicated. many students had a difficult time making their volcano's, even though I had made one in advance as a model.

After classes I met with a representative from DSD and was trained on the use of our Grade Book program. I had picked up a lot of the information from the other fifth grade teachers. It was a good review. I next met with the leader of our Reading Tutors. We review the past two weeks and mapped out plans for the next few. It was good to get a validation that what we were doing was good. My reading tutors like my classroom and students.

One interest of note this week, my classes' new president and vice president started helping out. It has been good to see her in action. She asked to meet with me to see how we could make the class more fun. She wanted to decorate the class with some things she and other students had made and she wanted to be able to let the class play games once in a while when we had a little extra time. Her ideas were great and we spent about 15 minutes playing Heads-UP-Seven-Up. Students had fun and it was a fitting way to end a week.

There are some frustrations I have that still bother me. My students do not write very well and they have very poor penmanship. I will start cursive writing practice next week and hope to improve their penmanship. The real problem they have is in grammar and spelling. They slop through projects and do not put enough effort in their work. Most do not have any real pride in their work. I have started using rubrics to see if I can provide them with more clear expectations.

The other frustration I have is as a team we still are not very close. Sharing of "good" ideas is not one of our strong suits. One teacher talked the principal out of MP3 players so she could use them with her class. There was no discussion about making them available for the other fifth grade teachers to use in their class. It was like it was my idea and I am going to use it to show that I am better than the rest of you. I say this even though she has been very good at helping me when I need help. She is the experienced teacher in our grade level and I expected that she would be more willing to assist with good ideas. When I have an idea I at least provide a copy of my idea to the others. Because of my lack of experience, my good ideas are few and far between. At times I am just glad to get through the day.

Another area of frustration I have is figuring out how to relate to my students and teach them at the level that meets their learning styles. I try to use a good mixture of directed instruction, guide instruction, and independent activities. I do a pretty good job with my middle level students, I am working hard to reach my lower level learners. The area I am weakest in is meeting the needs of my gifted or higher level learners.

All-in-all this has not been a bad week.