Week 2

      This was my first full week of student teaching and it went by pretty quickly. I am getting accustomed to the routine in the classroom and all of the staff as well as the children. All eight boys in the classroom have BIPs so I am getting used to helping keep track of the data that we need to take daily. My cooperating teacher has let me take over the Calendar group of the classroom. This group consists of 2 groups of four students at a time. Half of the students are in the sensory area while the other half are at a table in the front of the room participating in calendar. We go over days of the the week, the month, the weather, following on step direction as well as greeting their peers and writing their names. There were a few challenges this week. The biggest challenge here for me is being accustomed to working with younger children again who need constant physical prompts and support. I am doing my best keeping my energy up with them since they have so much energy. A situation that I encountered was working through the smart board calendar group with the students. Up until Wednesday our smart board was not working and now that it is, the students are intrigued by it and want to touch all the buttons and explore when they are going up for calendar rotations. 

      I am continuing to learn a lot from my cooperating teacher and trying to take in as much as I can in the short amount of time that I am there. I still observe when I have a minute too and am currently in the process of picking a focus students from my edTPA. The most important thing that I have learned about is time management. We have a plan period for about and hour and a half and we never sit and take a lunch, instead we eat while we are working on anything that needs to get done. It is a never-ending list of things that need to be done, but the teacher that I work with has great time management and is extremely organized.   

      I hope to learn more about IEPs and how to go about writing them since I have only practiced a few times. I will get to sit in on my first IEP meeting in October and have attended my first special education meeting this morning. All of the staff is extremely welcoming and I am starting to learn the routine in the classroom and at the school. This coming Thursday we have a curriculum night where we present what we teach the students to all the parents. It will be another learning process for me since I have never been a part of one. This coming week I will try and add some new parts to the Calendar rotations for the student that will: 

1. Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher- led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.