School Week.

So sorry to not have posted in a while, but I've had a very busy week and a half!

Last week was the first week that I really began to teach in my Year 4 classroom. My class is made up of 22 eight and nine year olds. As class sizes go, this number is pretty manageable; except that the classroom we're in is the small classroom I have EVER taught in. There's hardly enough room for Malane and myself to walk around the desks. The reason for this is that the-powers-that-be decided to move a grade from Senior School (think high school) into the Middle School. As a result the smaller middle rooms, which used to be shared space inbetween classes, were walled off and became actual classrooms.

We have a SmartBoard (or for those less tech minded- an interactive whiteboard, think big board that basically acts like a touchscreen computer. We can project any material you can pull up onto the computer and then use smartboard pens or even our hands to write on or move things around the screen) See picture, but excuse my messy math writing. I was in a hurry. This is our only board space and I never really thought about how much I used a regular whiteboard, but now that it's gone I really miss it!

I taught my first lesson on Tuesday morning. It was just a small group spelling lesson with four students so it was nothing too strenuous. I still wasn't real familiar with how Malane generally sets up lessons and looking back I would have changed a few things. (We were working with words that end in -ness. And ness is a really hard suffix to explain. How do you tell an 8 year old that ness means "the state of being"? (Happyness means the state of being happy) Try writing a few sentences with -ness words and you'll see what I mean...

Later that day I taught a two hour science lesson. I had them working in groups of four to sort 6 or 7 mystery substances into groups of solids, liquids, or inbetween. (The inbetween was a cornstarch/water mix which is considered a gelatinous solid since it displays properties of liquids and properties of solids.) They had no problem sorting the cornstarch mix but surprisingly (to me at least) they had a really hard time sorting flour. The fact that the particles are so tiny really confuses them. I had microscopes set up so the students could see the flour particles but we still ended up having a long chat at the end of the lesson about how flour is DEFINITELY a solid. The students were a bit crazy for this lesson, partly because they were excited about the substances, party because they had absolutely no clue about how to work in groups, and partly because I needed to explain the directions in a more coherent way.

I signed up to assist with the fashion design club every Tuesday during lunch/recess time. Lynne, the teacher I am working with on the club, brought out the schools six sewing machines. (They are Singers and relatively new) When the students arrived we had them pick out their patterns (Everyone is making either a skirt or trousers)and measured them. They also designed what they want their outfit to look like. Lynne and were talking an in a few weeks we will be taking an afternoon field trip to a fabric store to pick out fabric. We might also be watching a few clips from Project Runway for inspiration.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday I taught a very small guided reading group, just two students. I loved this lesson because the book was absolutely wonderful and because I was only teaching two students I could really tailor the conversations to their specific questions and wonderings.

Also on Friday I taught a math lesson. It went pretty well, but the students still felt they could goof off while I was teaching.....that will be fixed, trust me.

And then it was the weekend!!