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