First Day of Student Teaching

What a quick first day of student teaching it was today. It seemed like the day went by really fast as we went through our scheduled lessons. First up we went over some basic teach-to’s on what to do when you answer a question (raise your hand, don’t blurt it out) and how to line up (no talking, single file, be respectful). Then we began our day with the Daily Language Review (DLR) and also went over the math written on the meeting board. The students did a wonderful job working on the math meeting board and had some great questions regarding the problem of the day. We went over the meeting board answers and found out that the temperature this morning was 1°F which to the students is “very cold”!

Today was my first day of teaching math all on my own. We went over Saxon Math Lesson 82, with the lesson objective today being for the students to learn how to read and draw a pictograph using a scale of 2. For the lesson we used a smiley face to represent two students and had to find out how many smiley’s to draw for each room based on the number of students. As guided practice we used a pictograph representing the amount of donuts and milk cartons certain classes ate and drank. Since we were working with a scale of 2, each whole donuts and milk cartoon was worth 2, while a half carton or donut equaled 1. The rest of the math consisted of working on 3 and 4 subtraction facts as well as working with base ten blocks, and double digit column addition.

Later in the day the students read a story in their Reading Books called Ant by Rebecca Stefoff. The students were able to learn a whole bunch of new information about ants. Based on the reading, they talked about ant jobs, where ants live, types of ants and other interesting facts. They learned that ants build onto their home every year, so the bigger the ant hill, the more years that ant colony had been living there. They also learned about the dangerous and huge army ants as well as what a parasol is by learning about parasol ants. Yay new vocabulary to add to their lives!

The students also got the chance to work with the 3rd graders during social studies again. This time the students got to write their own fictional story as if they were an Inuit Indian of the Arctic. The students came up with all kinds of great stories such as falling through the ice while hunting moose, or learning how to ice fish for the first time. All of the stories I read were very creative and the students did a great job having a beginning middle and end to their stories as well. I am so amazed at how imaginative the students can be, they are a lot of fun.

Overall my first day of student teaching was really awesome. My math lesson went well, I got to read some creative arctic stories and I was able to learn a little bit more about ants today. I cannot wait to teach math again tomorrow and I look forward to what adventures await me throughout this student teaching semester!