New Week, New Experiences!

Hey everyone!!

     After a very fun and relaxing weekend it is nice to be at school again (did I ever think I would say this back in my elementary days?!?) I found it to be incredibly easy waking up at 6:05 (*Gasp* Yes, some people are awake before the sun!) As my time is adding up at the school, my portion of responsibility is GROWING! This week, I was given control over Math Meeting, where students meet 1st thing in the morning in the back of the classroom to go over money, weather, days of the week, seasons, counting, time, and tallying. It is a great, and very gradual, way for me to begin my teaching experience. Today was the first time I have taught Math Meeting, and I felt it went very well. Once it was over, I definitely felt pleased with how I handled the children (They LOVE to get away with as much as possible! Smarties!) I think I held my head a little higher after this lesson, and thought my portion of the teaching was complete for the day. *Sigh*

Math Meeting Center

     WRONG! My precious, sweet, soft-spoken teacher came up to me before computer time and asked if I would feel comfortable doing 1 minute reading assessments. "Heck yeah!!! Sure!!! I'm on a roll today!!! ", I thought to myself. "Sure, I'd love to." I said in a soft voice. 1 minute reading assessments, what a breeze. I mean really, you time a child reading for  60 seconds, and circle what they get wrong. Piece of cake........... right? Fast forward to me scribbling in red pen, flipping through pages, looking for scores, and glancing over to see if my teacher sees the chaos that is existing in my own little world at that moment. SHE MAKES IT LOOK SO EASY. Yes, timing the students reading for 60 seconds is a breeze, but there is much more to it than that. To make it short, my students learn to read using phonics on a very detailed level. In college, I was taught was to teach students to read without phonics. Do you see the problem I am having? The students know more about phonics than I do! I mean, we are talking about vowel digraphs, consonant digraphs, ghost letter digraphs, diphthongs, trigraphs, combinations, etc. My students are coding words and they are only 6 years old. There are a lot of "sing-song-y" rules that go along with phonics that I am still learning myself, so this makes it a little difficult when I am trying to explain to an eager student why they got a word wrong.... 

     Only one word could describe the feeling I was having at that moment.... frustrated. I have learned the text-book definition of teaching. Lesson plan writing has been drilled into my head for the past 4 years, so much so I could probably do it in my sleep. I've read books and watched countless videos on child psychology. So why is it I'm actually running into a problem here?

Examples of what my students already know.

Oh really?

News to me...

Ok, one I actually know! 

This should come in... handy.

So after an hour or so of deep thought and self reflection I have come up with this: 

1) I am super glad that I am running into this...speed bump we shall call it... during student teaching and not my actual 1st year of being a real teacher.

2) I think that know phonics on this level will benefit me in the long run. If I get a job in the future that requires me to teach phonics, then I have already learned it from the best. If not, then I'll still know it and it won't hurt me one bit.

Soooo, as you can see it isn't all rainbows and butterflies. The days are long, my feet are tired, I sleep very little, and I get frustrated at times. I just want to do well SO BAD. 

BUT at the end of the day, I wouldn't trade it for anything. :)

Night all!

-Hannah xoxo