Week 16: Sad that next week is #17!

Tuesday, April 30

My classes welcomed me back to school today with the sweetest gift—a book made by the students entitled “Marital Advice”. Each student made a page giving advice as to what my husband and I need to do to keep a happy marriage. Their responses were hilarious! Some suggested jewels and rings, opening up car doors, painting the house and my favorite, buying me a monster pointer finger. (The children have little plastic pointers that go on their fingers that they can use whenever we do letterbook; the idea is to help them follow along better and stick with the class). It was the sweetest gift; I was so touched by Christy’s thoughtfulness!

I am only in charge of journal and science this week, so I don’t feel like I’m doing too much. We are changing units now in science, and are starting the butterfly unit. It’s really neat because the kindergarten teachers order butterfly kits where actual caterpillar eggs come in the mail and the students are able to watch them become caterpillars, make their cocoons, and then become butterflies. For science today, we did a worksheet that explained the phases of a butterfly’s life. The students needed to cut out the squares and put them in order so that a book was made. It’s a great activity because many students still need to practice their cutting skills.

Wednesday, May 1

I am still in shock that May is here. I cannot believe how quickly this semester has flown by! Each month Christy does an assessment journal with the class and puts them into a binder to better assess their progress throughout the year. The journal pages have a question on the top of the page and lines on the bottom for the students to write their response, and then color a picture above their answer. Each assessment is done at the end of the month, so today I did April’s which asked, “What do you like to do on a rainy day?”

Going over this page with the class made it even more obvious to me how each student is different from one another. Some of their responses were complete sentences with great descriptions and perfect spelling while others were struggling with words like “to”. It is crazy how much of a gap there is in the students’ ability levels. What’s great about assessments like these journals though is that the teacher is able to see the student’s progress based on his or her work since the beginning of the year, rather than just comparing the student to where everybody else currently is.

Thursday, May 2

Whenever a student has a birthday, the parents are always welcomed to bring a birthday treat for the class; Christy sent a note home in the beginning of the year letting the parents know. It usually is a cupcake or brownies, but sometimes the over-the-top parents make it much more of a bigger ordeal. Tomorrow is Caroline’s birthday and her mom went completely overboard with the treats. She brought ice-cream cups, brownies, strawberries, lemonade and made goodie bags to go home with each child.

Christy is thankful that we’re towards the end of the birthdays because if there were many more, she would probably send a note home letting parents know that just a simple treat is fine. After exquisite birthday treats like these in the past, students have gone home telling their parents that they had to bring xyz and had to make goody bags for all the students. It’s fun to celebrate birthdays, but when snack time takes a half-hour because of all the birthday treats, it’s a little extreme. The children obviously love it though; one student said today, “Now this is a birthday party!”

Friday, May 3

Today was a half-day of school. Though most grade teachers look forward to these days and get excited for them, they are days that Christy has come to dread. Because of having half-day kindergarten, that means there are two classes, so on the half-days, the afternoon does not have school whereas the morning class still comes in. When looking at the academic calendar for Beecher, I found that there are seven half-days so the morning class essentially has an extra week of school than the afternoon class! This makes it extremely hard to keep the two classes on track.

Yesterday we squeezed in extra projects in the afternoon, and they did a fabulous job getting everything done. In the morning, we went at a much slower pace and spent extra time on things like coloring, cutting, snack time (thank goodness for all those extra birthday snacks!), etc. so that today, the morning class could do the rest of the things that the afternoon class did. The morning class got everything in and the classes are on the same spot now in each subject, but because we still had extra time, the students got to watch a short video on phonics. It makes it hard having the keep the classes together, but it’s worth the extra effort.

On another note, I cannot believe that next week is my last week at Beecher. My time here has flown by! I will greatly miss my class and my teachers; they have all become so special to me. Both of my student teaching placements have been such a blessing in my life!