My First Full Day of Teaching!

As I mentioned before, today was my first full day of teaching! Overall, it went really well. It is such a great feeling to run the day, and it makes me even more excited about becoming a teacher. Tanya is really great about letting me do as much in the classroom as I feel comfortable doing and I have taken every opportunity to teach that I can.

The art of teaching really comes into play when you have a full day that you need to keep running smoothly. I feel so lucky to be able to practice this skill while I am here. I had an idea to make a poster that says "What To Do When I'm Done." I think that this might lessen the number of children coming up to the teachers and saying, "What do I do now?"

Everyday, we have reading and writing group rotations. Tanya and I planned the activities for this week last week so everything is ready to go for each day. It is such a nice feeling to be organized and prepared well ahead of time! I am going to continue being so well-planned when I am doing all of the planning on my own.

After school today, we had a Professional Development session about strategic questioning. This prompted me to think of a few ideas that I can use in the classroom during guided reading. I have taken over guided reading groups for a little over a week, so I am feeling more comfortable about how they are run. Professional Development gave me the idea of covering up the title of the book and then having the children think of a title by getting clues from the picture. Another activity that I could do would be to give the kids a title of a book and have them illustrate a cover that fits with it.

Tomorrow I am taking over the whole day again! It is Shrove Tuesday here (Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras) and the tradition is to make pancakes. This tradition came from people using up what was in their cupboards before the start of Lent. It is more common to put lemon and sugar, chocolate, or jam on pancakes than it is to use maple syrup. Tomorrow morning I am using my mom's recipe and making pancakes for my host family!

Tomorrow I will post pictures of my classroom and student work thus far!