This week I have been quoting Psalm 23 to myself time and time again. He provides for my every need even when I feel like the week is rough or tiring He still shows Himself to be a source of comfort. I have also been singing a song that is called "Revelation Song" and has the words "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain. Holy, holy is He. Sing a new song to Him who sits on Heaven's Mercy Seat. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come! With all creation I sing: Praise to the King of Kings! You are my everything, and I will adore You!" Truly He is the Holy and the One who is worthy to be praised!
Top 10 of the week:
- Finished reading Gospel of Luke
- AfroCuban Taiko Drumming Group (a middle school/high school traveling group)
- Skype Interview for Student Support Services (SSS) job position at CAJ
- Wednesday Night Bible study and also playing some video games with the kids
- Hailstorm with golf-balled sized hailstones
- 3 Wishes Paragraphs (my students finished up their writing project!)
- Racquetball 12-15. My highest score against Dale!
- MAP testing (to test our students reading)
- Friday Nighters (we had about 25 kids and the lesson was on prayer)
- 3rd Grade Water Unit
Some of my students writing accomplishments! We were learning how to write a five-sentence paragraph that uses different sentence beginnings.
Another writing piece.
The hailstorm we had. The hail was golf ball sized I had some damage mostly on the car hood.
The Afro-Cuban-Taiko drumming group that visited Carver Elementary
Some of the students playing drums with the drumming group during music class.Top Quotes & Stories:
In my guided reading group we were learning about pirates and how they used to be executed by the government because of their deeds. After being executed governments would put their bodies into cages and leave them there to keep people from becoming pirates. Since we had learned about pirates from different time periods and had discussed Greek and Roman galleys I drew the correlation that during Roman times they used to do a similar thing. Romans used to put criminals on crosses and leave them by the sides of a road so that people would not become criminals. Some of the kids made the connection of crosses to the fact that Jesus died on a cross and one student said that they would put swords into their side to make sure that they were dead. I never planned to have this connection but the Lord did. I never would have guessed that their could be a connection to Christ on the cross from learning about pirates who sailed the seven seas!
On another occasion we were reading a book that talked about how cupids were pagan. I had one student look up the word pagan and we ended up discussing the difference between angels and cupids. Angels have to do with "God" capital 'G' and cupids have to do with 'gods' lower case 'g.' This is because cupids were from Greek origin but angels were not. I discovered later that Cupid was actually the Roman god of desire, affection and love and was therefore not an angel by any means. The Roman 'Cupid' was the same as the Greek 'Eros' and was the son of Venus and Mars. Anyhow, long story short, who would've thought that we could have had a discussion about the difference between God and pagan gods?! God sometimes uses very unique opportunities for His glory!
Teacher Thoughts:
- When working in groups for science experiments give students each an assigned job: Materials Manager, Messenger, and Tracker (these are 3 options). The Materials Manager gets the materials and puts away the materials. The Messenger is the only one that can ask the teacher a question. The Tracker is the one who makes sure that responsibilities are being shared among group members.
- When assigning jobs for science group work it is also good to model for the students different scenarios and how people might perform their jobs.
- When using droppers in science, provide one dropper so that all students have to share equal responsibility when using the dropper. It forces them to work together.
- Use a document camera such as the Point2View camera to model the experiment or the setup for the experiment for the students.
- It is better to give longer more detailed instructions at the beginning of the lesson than to continually have to get students attention throughout the lesson.
- When students are done performing experiments and you want to discuss the experiment, have them come to the front carpet area so that they are not distracted by materials or by other classmates. Then you can have their undivided attention for discussion.
- Having all your guided reading group plans ready ahead of time makes your week much easier because you can be more flexible.
- If the students are very chatty and are not paying attention when you ask them for it, set a timer until they quiet down. If it takes them 10 seconds then write the 10 seconds on the board. The seconds will accumulate throughout the days of the week and whenever they get to 1 minute (or whatever time you designate) have them come up during recess to serve their 1 minute of time since it was time that was taken away from classroom instruction.
- If you give students an instruction, wait for all of them to do it before you continue otherwise your instructions are meaningless. (i.e. "Please take a seat before I give you instructions." means that you should wait until all students are actually in their seat before you give instructions)
- Use the NLVM website to model percentages, fractions or graphs. It is also helpful for other things as well but it has proven to be a wonderful visual for my students in math class and it is a simple way to integrate technology.
- that I will finish these last 2 weeks of student teaching strong (I have 9 actual days if you don't count weekends)
- that I will be able to finish my Senior Portfolio that shows all my student teaching accomplishments
- that I will be diligent to read the Word and in prayer in these final weeks
- that I will wrap up all that needs to be done before I return to Japan
- for my health (I was losing my voice this last week but am still doing well)
- Opportunities to get to know my students better
- For God's provision financially
- For God bringing me to this point in teaching. Student teaching has taught me so much.
- That I have full-coverage for my van when the hail did damage to it
Great job Victor!! Gambatte! You are doing so well. Thanks for sharing about the opportunities that you had in sharing during school.It sounds like you are having a great student teaching experience....Praise the Lord! Thanks for sharing the sweet things that the students say.
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Mom
The wrap-up to the year is quickly coming and I'm looking forward to summer projects already!
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