First Day at Washington Elementary

Well, I woke up today with lots of nerves! I was nervous to experience a new school, classroom, cooperating teacher, and students, but at the same time I was super excited for all of that too! I am placed in a 3rd grade classroom at Washington Elementary School in Bloomington, IL. I have never worked with 3rd graders before so I wasn't sure of what to expect, but needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised!

The morning started off a little hectic! My teacher had a meeting early before school so when I arrived she was also just getting settled in the classroom for the day. The students started piling in and looked at my like who is this girl in our classroom. Once everyone was settled in my CT introduced me and I sat and observed the daily routine. The day was also very hectic because it was picture day so after we did Language Arts, the entire class went down to the gymnasium to take class pictures. The students were all dressed so nice for picture day! 

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly. One major aspect of the classroom that I noticed was the PBIS system my CT does. She uses clips like on a clip chart, but it is a little different. The students can either move down two spaces or up two spaces and at the end of the day on their daily take home sheet they have to write which color they are on so that their parents know when they get home. I like the idea of this because not only do the students feel they need to behave for their teacher and themselves, they also have to go home and tell their parents how their behavior was throughout the day. I'm not entirely sure if there is a reward system attached to the PBIS board, but I am excited to see if there is!

The most exciting part of the day was that I actually got to help with the Math centers that the class does. My CT said I will be in charge of a math center every week and I'm a little nervous, but totally up for the challenge. It was super beneficial that today I got to help out a little. The students are in groups and have rotations. One group is on the computers working on a math program, the other group is playing a math game in the hall with a teacher that helps out with special, the next group is in the classroom with my CT working on information the students need extra help on, and the last group was with me in the classroom working on a timed math sheet and then had a worksheet following. A lot of the students struggled with the worksheet which had to do with number lines. I was able to help them and use the instructional strategies we learned in our Math class last semester. I never thought I would actually want to teach Math like that, but I tried to base all of the problems on base 10 and it actually helped them!

Lastly, I was also able to talk a lot with my CT about my expectations and the different assignments we need to do. However, I didn't have to go into too much detail because my CT has worked with lots of students from ISU that have done the same assignments our class is doing this semester. This is super helpful and makes me feel less overwhelming because we are on the same page. I was also able to work with the Social Studies teacher to talk about my lesson I'll be doing in two weeks. She gave me a book as well as a couple other resources to help me out with my lesson. Overall, today I felt super welcomed not only into the school, but my classroom as well. The nerves I had about being in a 3rd grade classroom are gone and it is all excitement now! I am looking forward to working with these students more throughout the semester!

My teacher talked about a lot of different websites she uses as resources for materials, lesson plans, worksheets, and much more, but one stuck in my head! In the website you can create an account for free and download stuff for free right now, but then when you become a teacher you can buy stuff off of here! Thought you would all enjoy this :)

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com