My kids

Well I am almost done with the third week of teaching.  I can't believe it!  It has gone by so fast!  I have been here for almost a month.  CRAZY!!  Anyways...my kids are great.  I am finally warming up to the idea of teaching them everyday and I think they are warming up to the idea of me being their teacher.  I think my favorite class is my basic reading class.  They are 7 and 8 years old and they are SO cute!  After class I go downstairs and they are waiting for their parents.  I hear a chorus of "teacher, teacher teacher!"  We have a lot of fun in that class.  During our break time I play Uno with them or they teach me how to make different origami things.  They are really good at it.  There was one student that I was a little worried about.  His name is Robbie.  He reminded me of a student that I had back when I was teaching first grade.  However, I started this new behavior plan and it has seemed to work on him.  The rule in our school is that you first get a warning.  Then, you have to miss part of your break.  After those two strikes you have to go talk to a secretary.  I created a visual for all of them.  They each have a clothespin with their name on it and if they break a rule they have to move their clip down.  I started this on Monday.  Both Monday and Wednesday Robbie had to move his clip.  On Wednesday he had to move his clip twice.  Yesterday he didn't have to move his clip!  This might seem like a small thing but it was HUGE to me!!  I am starting to love him!  

Then, I also teach a 5th grade class.  There are only 6 kids in my class.  It is so nice compared to the 28 kids I had to teach when I was student teaching.  They are pretty great also.  There is one trouble maker but he knows when it is time to work and when it is okay to be funny.  On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week the kids that go to elementary school had this HUGE test!  Their parents put so much pressure on them to do well it is insane.  So...I teach these kids on Wednesdays.  They came up to me at the beginning of class and said, "teacher we are done with our test!"  They were really excited.  So I let them talk about their test for awhile and I told them that if we could get all of our work done I would let them go outside for their breaktime as a reward for finishing their test.  They did a great job and we were able to go outside and play for a few minutes.  

Now to talk about my monstrous 4th graders.  They are very talkative and very crazy.  This class is my smallest class with only 5 kids but they are my hardest also.  I teach them on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday mornings.  On Tuesday they came in and they were CRAZY!!  I think it might have just been because they were stressed out about the tests they had been taking that day.  I hardly got anything done that day.  I let them talk about their test a little bit because I could tell it was on their minds.  Then, I tried to teach them language arts and English features and spelling words but they weren't having it.  They were talking over me like I wasn't even there.  It was so frustrating.  Then, after break we did our writing and then we were supposed to do our verbalization practice.  Our verbalization practice for this week is creating our dream city.  My fifth graders handled this activity so well.  We made a list of the things that they would want in their city and then they were supposed to come up and create their city on the board.  My fourth graders, on the other hand, could not handle it.  They were just being inappropriate with their city so I told them to sit down and write about their city instead.  They just could not handle the activity.  I had to have one of my students stay after class too because he was just not listening.  On Thursday I tried the activity again.  It went MUCH smoother and they actually acted as if they wanted to learn.  Now that the tests are over I think my students are more willing and ready to learn.  I hope they are like this for the rest of the semester.  :)

One of my 4th graders told me this joke yesterday and I thought it was worthy to post on here.

Q: What do you do if it is -60 degrees Celsius outside.

A: Stand in a corner because a corner is 90 degrees.

It took me a minute to figure it out but think about it.  It really is clever for a 4th grader.  :)

Then, on top of these classes, I also tutor a 12 year old boy named Sam on Monday and Friday nights.  He is SO quiet and it is hard to pull anything out of him.  For the first 15 minutes I quiz him on different spelling patterns.  This week we are working on the "ea" pattern like in the word "bread".  He stands at the board while I tell him words to spell.  After that we read a book.  We usually read a whole book during this 30 minute time period.  We choose relatively small books that he can get through in one sitting.  After he is done reading we take a 10 minute break.  2 hours is a LONG time to be sitting in one place.  Then, after that we do writing practice.  This is really hard for him.  I want to help him know how to write creatively but he says he doesn't understand any topic that I give him.  So....so far I have just had him write about the story we just read...I just don't know how to teach him how to write creatively.  Then, after all of this learning, we get to play a game.  We have played Monopoly and Guess Who and Uno.  This is the best part of the tutoring.  I really enjoy tutoring...I just wish he would open up and be more talkative.