Week 8

This seemed as though it was a short week in the classroom. Monday was data retreat day for all of the first grade teachers at our school. We each had substitutes in the classroom while we all met in the conference room to discuss many things about our classroom. There is a lot to talk about concerning curriculum and all of the new programs which need to be implemented from year to year. From what I've seen, things change for teachers every single fall-there's always something new to learn! It was a long and tiring day, but necessary considering all of the changes. I will be so grateful for each of the experiences that I've had once I'm finished with the residency program. I will have a lot of things that I can say I've seen and done! That means this week I was only in the classroom with the kiddos for two days. We packed a lot into those two day though!

In math we worked on partners of numbers up to 9. The students are getting pretty good at number 1-10 by now! It's exciting.
Science was filled this week with landforms-hills, mountains, valleys, plains, rivers, and lakes. We had the students make each of these with their play-doh and they LOVED it. They don't get to play enough in first grade, so they love it whenever they get to do something like this. They are so used to kindergarten, where they get to have playtime throughout the day-being a first grader is rough!

Sadly, that is all I have to write about this week. It was short and sweet. One of my little boys told me "Hey, Mrs. Aman? You're like the same level nice as my mom. You're like the same as my mom. Except, you've never yelled at me before!" hahahaha, It was pretty much the cutest thing ever.

Have a great weekend! God Bless,
Mrs. Aman

Week 7

This was another jam-packed week in the classroom! I think it was the fastest week so far. They just keep rolling by and there never seems to be enough time! This week the theme was pets-which of course was a very fun topic for the students to share about! We read many books about pets, wrote about our pets, and many other activities :)

Math this week consisted of a variety of activities and concepts. We worked on knowing triangles and rectangles, pairs of 6, and odds and evens. The students love to play math games, like garbage-where the students have to make the numbers from 1-10 with a deck of cards; and treasure hunt-in which they count by 5's and 10's. We learned about odds and evens, demonstrating that evens are happy because they have a partner, and odds are sad because they have no partner. We looked at this using the students as props, and also looking at dice patterns to see which numbers do and do not have partners. They grasped this concepts pretty well.

In reading we worked a lot on characters and setting (yet again :)) We charted the settings and then had the students match up what the characters were doing while they were in that setting. This helps the students with comprehension as well because it makes the story easier for them to retell. We also worked more on rhyming and word families/chunks. It seems as though reading is usually the same from week to week :)

In spelling this week we worked with the 'r' blends. The words were: crib, crab, grass, grab, trip, trab, hit, win, that, and good. We have the students work very hard on their spelling throughout the week with lots of practice. This week we had them draw out every word in order for them to better learn the meanings.

We did a lot more with science this week than we have been doing (at least while I'm in the classroom). We talked about thermometers and what they measure. We talked extensively about the sky and what we can see during the day and during the night, including (of course) the stars, clouds, moon (and it's four phases), and the sun! We talked a lot about how important the sun is and why it is so imperative to our lives. My mentor teacher said, "without the sun, we wouldn't be able to live." To which one of our girl students replied, "ya, and we wouldn't be able to go swimming either!" hahaha, it was really funny! We talked about shadows and how the night is the sun's shadow (of which they were amazed). Then for an activity we had the students draw the night sky on half of their paper, and draw the sky in the daytime on the other half of their paper, just so they can distinguish between the two.

We also had a birthday boy in our class this week! His birthday was actually on Sunday and he was sick...and he was also sick on Monday. Tuesday his dad brought him in with cookies, Kool-Aid jammers, and a sheet cake in tow, along with napkins and chinet plates! We had quite the day trying to keep the kids at bay, as we wanted to give them the cake at the very end of the day. So we did cake as the last thing and it was quite entertaining to watch. The boys got an IMMEDIATE sugar rush. They began gallivanting around the room, screaming and dancing. The girls just sat quietly and took their time eating their cake, as slowly as they possibly could. It was an interesting observation!

That was my week in a nutshell! Full of lots of fun times, and oh so much learning :)
Have a great weekend! God Bless,
Mrs. Aman

Week 6

This week of teaching was quite the whirlwind! Mondays are always very fast-paced and crazy. Mainly this is because I've been away from the classroom for four days and my teacher and I haven't had time to catch up on what's going on for the week yet. We have many specials on Mondays and Tuesdays, so it makes for a busy three days that I'm in the classroom! I'm finding that I should maybe write about what we did during the day at the end of every school day-because by the time it gets to the end of the week I almost can't remember what we did!

Our theme for the week was 'growing up.' This made for many fun discussions and books that dealt with getting older. We read a book on how lions grow up and the students were just amazed that by the time a lion is 6 years old it is considered an adult and goes out on its own. Since we have many 6 year olds in our class, it really hit home for them! We talked about the stages of growing up, how an adult is considered 20 and older and one of the boys stated, "ya, and then you get to be 90 and die!" bahaha...

We continued with our reading groups, as usual. We are learning more about nonfiction books and what makes a book nonfiction. Real pictures is a big indicator for them that the book will be nonfiction. I read a book with my high group of readers called, "The Giant and the Frippit." Obviously this was a fiction book, however the Frippit was this funny rabbit looking thing and one of my boys INSISTED that it was nonfiction because he was SURE that he had seen a frippit before in the woods. This kid would not take no for an answer! I think we have some more work to do.... :)

For math we did a lot of station teaching this week. We did several activities to get the kids working on their forward and backward number sequencing, as well as working on the terms 'what comes before' and 'what comes after.' We've been working a lot with the numbers 10-20 because the teens are sometimes the most difficult for the students to grasp. First grade also works on counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. We tried a game to help them to learn to count by 5's, but it was a disaster. They really struggle with the number 15 because it's different than everything else and more abstract.

The other big event for this week was our field trip to the fire station. We walked the little more than 6 blocks to the station, which was quite the trek for some of the students. They whined and whined the whole way there saying things like, "I'm gonna diiiiieee," and "Why can't we take the bus?" In their defense it was pretty hot outside-I felt like complaining a little bit too, but I AM the grown up now ;) The fire station was so much fun for the students. We watched this ancient video on fire safety and then got to look inside the fire truck. The kiddos loved it. One of the tools that the fireman pulled out what a long spear looking object with a blunt end and a sharp end. It is used for opening doors during a fire. The fireman asked what that could be used for and one of my little ones yelled out "To kill zombies!!" Ohh dear...what is the world coming to! haha, it was pretty entertaining. All of the students LOVED to meet the fireman and thought they were so cool. We even got some pictures of them! I will have to post them once I figure out if I am allowed to do so...I wouldn't want to post them when if I shouldn't, but I think it would be fun to put a group picture of my class on here :)

That was our week in a nutshell!

Hope you had a great week and have a wonderful weekend!

God Bless,

Mrs. Aman

Week 5

The days while we're in the elementary classroom seem to go so quickly, while the days spent in our college courses seem to go quite slowly. We all just wish that we could spend every day with our little students and be able to wrap up the week with them. Monday through Wednesday just isn't enough days to fully connect with our students! I feel as though my mentor teacher and I finally hit our stride by Wednesday and then it's time for my week with the class to be over with-it makes it difficult to get much work done when you're always changing places. We have assignments that need to be done with our mentor's guidance, but we just have no time during the week to talk about anything other than preparation for the next day's class! I'm hoping that we figure out a system that works soon, because right now I still feel as though we're floundering to find a system that works well for all involved.

This week with my first graders was more of the same. We're still working on learning the seasons. We watch a Brainpop Jr. (an online resource) to get an overview of the seasons and then we talk with the students about 4 things in each season: activities, animals, clothes, and trees. Pretty basic :)

With math this weeks we've been working on pairs of 6, such as 6+0=6, 1+5=6, 2+4=6, and 3+3=6. We've been teaching them to write these equations (which is a little challenging) as well as having them play concentration games to match up the pairs. We'll keep moving along in this same fashion working on pairs of 7, 8, 9, and 10. We've also been working on having the students count by 5's, 10's and 2's. These little one's have to know a lot!

Reading this week is just more of the same-we meet in our reading groups and they read individually from their book boxes. During read alouds we've been reading each one of the Bill Peet books. The students love his creativity and the fact that his books are a little silly and wild :)He even has an autobiography so we've been able to use that as a window for an author study as well as learning general information about autobiographies! Text to text, text to self, and text to world connections are a huge thing we've been working on also.

We've moved onto writing as well-as part of 'The Daily 5' reading program that started this year. We've talked about how to come up with ideas to write about and how the students just need to keep writing whatever comes into their mind. It was a challenge for a couple of students, but for the most part the writing went much better than expected! First graders love to tell stories, so they loved the chance to get out their thoughts and be able to share with the class.

Next week will be very busy! We're taking a trip to the fire station so that should make for some interesting stories! I'm looking forward to it :)

Until next week-Have a good one!
God Bless,
Mrs. Aman

Week Four

My last few weeks of teaching have been...really rewarding. It is amazing as one of the teachers in the classroom to be able to know so much about each one of my students. I was always intimidated by that aspect of teaching. I didn't think that I could ever know so much about so many kids-but it just takes time and attention given to them to learn all about their traits, their strengths and weaknesses, and their interests.

We started reading groups this past week with our students. The first day I worked with the higher level students, so we used more difficult books and got more into the meat of the story. We started as we always do, with a picture walk through the book and a look at the characters. Then the students read through the book individually while I listened to each of them read. The same scenario ensued with my next group of slightly lower students except we worked on a few more concepts and they needed a little more help with their books.

The next day I worked with lower level students and much lower level books. It is amazing to me that students who are roughly the same age can be so far apart in their reading interests and abilities. The lower students needed quite a bit more work and modeling before reading their books. We worked on word families, or "chunks" before we even looked at the books. We worked on the -ap, -am, -at, and -an work families this week. I have the students sort the words under the proper word families. We've found that students respond much more to calling the word families "chunks" because it makes it more relevant to them and they have a greater understanding of what it means.
It seems as though reading is definitely the main focus of first grade, at least in these first few weeks. It seems as though some days we are working on reading all day long. As reading is the basis and foundation for all other subjects, I can see why the focus would be so heavy on this subject in first grade. If the students do not know the basic sight words and high frequency words or how to sound out their words how will they ever be able to decode higher level texts? In addition to reading we also work heavily on handwriting, spelling, and letters-very, very basic.

I love working with my students though. They make my day by giving lots of hugs and smiles and many moments to laugh at. We have many kids in our classroom who love to sing, beatbox, and dance. They love to hold their teacher's hand and blush when you give them lots of praise. They are just precious darlings and I love so much about working with them. Gifts I've received? A dandelion given to me as a 'wishing flower' and a grass/weed of some sort, both of which I have proudly displayed on my desk as if they were the most lovely and expensive trinkets I've ever been given. Our class pet? A very dead looking chrysalis in a big jam jar. It started out the year as a huge, green caterpillar and has since morphed into a brown, dry cocoon just waiting to turn into a butterfly! We found out that sometimes the chrysalis won't open until spring!! I don't know if our first graders can wait that long...or if I can wait that long!

Thanks for reading my classroom adventures! I will probably end up posting here once a week at the end of my week with the kiddos :)
Have a happy day!

Mrs. Aman

My Residency Experience: The First Few Weeks

Hello to this little piece of blogland! I am not officially a teacher yet, but I am starting my year as a resident intern/teacher candidate-whatever terminology you prefer :). I decided that although this blog will hopefully be used for my own classroom someday, I should start documenting my residency experience as soon as possible so that I can have it to look at in future years. I am a little behind as far as the start of the year goes, for a few reasons. The first one being that the start of the school year has been pretty hectic with students and planning (as any teacher would tell you I'm sure :)). The second reason is that like many other teachers just starting out, I have contracted the flu in only my second week, so I haven't documented things as early as I maybe should have.

Better late than never, right?
The year started for me (and every other teacher) on August 15th with meetings, rallies, planning, and open house. I have gotten to work with my mentor teacher every step of the way and she has been more than accommodating throughout this journey so far. Students began school on August 22nd, which is much earlier than I ever remember starting elementary school. It seems as though it gets earlier every year! I am in a first grade classroom with 18 students. I will be spending Mon.-Wed. at the school and Thurs.-Fri. in my college courses, along with the other interns participating in the program.

I don't remember every single detail of the first couple of weeks, but a general overview will do for right now.

Being on the inside of teaching is much different than I expected it to be. There are a lot of scheduling difficulties, trials with students and curriculum, and not nearly enough time on your hands. I am told that things smooth out as the year progresses, which I can understand. At the beginning of the year it's as if the students are still at the same place they were at the end of the previous year (um...duh?). So in other words, my first graders still have many kindergarten tendencies and behaviors as well as a completely different schedule than they are used to. Our students asked us during the first week, "When do we get to play with toys?" because they are used to that in kindergarten.

A lot of the first week is going through the schedule with the students, as well as what will be expected of them throughout the year. I found that hallway and classroom behaviors need a lot of work-things such as not acting up in the hallway on the way to the bathroom, lunchroom, etc. Things such as not talking when the teacher talks, respecting each other, etc. are also issues. It has definitely been a little exhausting, but already very rewarding. Even if a student is having trouble with behaviors, it is still very easy to form an attachment to to that child-each student has so many attributes to praise and be proud of, a teacher just has to look past some surface behaviors to get to that point sometimes. It is completely worth it to do so.

Our schedule so far has consisted of our morning meeting, in which we go through the schedule of the day, the date, our calendar, and what day of the school year we are on (shown with money/coins). We then work on the normal curriculum areas such as math, handwriting, reading, and spelling. In addition to that there are many 'specials' including music, art, gym, and library.

I am very excited for the rest of the year and hope that I can document the year as it continues so that I can have something to look back on in future years :).

God Bless!
Mrs. Aman

Welcome!

Hello, welcome to my classroom blog! This is where I will be sharing what is going on in my classroom. I will also be posting pictures of projects and other fun things we do as a class as well! Hope you enjoy learning about what your children are up to while they are in school!