I learned more about flexibility :) I taught 5 of the lessons I had planned for my unit on immigration but much of it had to be adapted or dismissed due to time constraints and making the lessons more age-appropriate. Our next social studies unit will be Ch. 7: How Are People Around the World Alike and Different?
In math I am teaching multiplication and division and let me tell you, these are very difficult concepts for 3rd grade students!
I am starting Stone Fox for one of my reading groups and in English we just finished The Cactus Hotel which is all about saguaro cacti. Our next story for English will be Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I'm excited and so are my students!
Next week the students will be performing in their music program and I am looking forward to seeing all their hard work.
Top 10 of the week:
- I'm halfway through student teaching already
- Teaching multiplication and division
- Taught my first cursive letters to 3rd graders: capital letters 'G' and 'S'
- Finished reading Deuteronomy and Joshua
- Introduced Stone Fox to one of my guided reading groups
- Carver Picture Day for the students
- Students wrote cards to soldiers in the U.S. military
- Friday Nighters: I introduced a variation of dodge ball
- Small group on Wednesday night on Philippians
- Playing racquetball with Dale. I'm improving slowly but surely! I was also able to go for a 1.5 mile run in just-above-freezing weather!
Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures this week but here is one and more are to come!
My Saturday morning breakfast. Josh made cooked up some asparagus the night before so I decided to try some.
- When the class was taking a short stretch break during the day: "Mr. Eby you must be more flexible than me because you're older!" -Andrew
- One of my students, Garret, has a solution to those yellow pencils that have no eraser because it has popped out. He takes his pink eraser and drills a hole with the back of his pencil into the eraser. He claims that it puts a new eraser into the top of pencils.
- On another occasion I stopped by and when one of the students was poking holes into their eraser with their pencil. I said, "Wow. Don't make it too holey!" A girl nearby looked over and said, "Oh, I thought you meant holy like church kind of holy."
- When planning a unit decide on groups to use for the entire unit (i.e. Joel and Amos will be partners for the entire week whenever you do pair work). It saves time.
- When all the students are required to use cursive on all assignments make sure you also use cursive whenever you write. (My cursive looks bad enough on paper. On a white board still worse... On a Smart board with the calibrations off...oh my! :)
- Pacing your lessons is important.
- Sometimes its better to have an assessment that takes several days because otherwise you have lots of student work that is unfinished and it hangs on the students and yourself. Less and better quality is better for you and your students.
- When correcting spelling words used in sentences don't have students correct every misspelling. The goal is the spelling words...correct those.
- When correcting student work, find a student that got 100% and use that for checking all other student work. Its much faster for grading.
- Mrs. Breitbach found a website that had a live video of a bald eagle sitting on 3 eggs about to hatch. She showed it to the class. School can be fun and bringing in little tidbit news and learning in that way will often be remembered better than everything else that is taught.
- Start your lessons on a good note, end your lessons on a good note. Your students will remember how you began and how you ended.
- If, in your lesson, a student can write their answer on the board or demonstrate part of activity DO IT! The students are far more attentive when they see a peer at the front of the room showing them something.
- 3rd graders have a difficult time with open-ended assignments. Be structured and thorough in your explanation.
- read the Bible and pray with diligence
- be prepared and confident in my teaching and that I will be "on top" of all of my teaching responsibilities
- get rest
- that I will be able to have deeper conversations with Antonio at Friday Nighters
- be a Christ-like example and encouragement at Carver Elementary School
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