It was the last day of the first week time just flew by! Today I did some language arts and math with the students. While I was teaching these lessons, I noticed something about myself. Compared to the beginning of the week, I felt a little different. Like I said yesterday, I have been feeling a little more comfortable and more in command of the class. And I feel like this allows me to better teach the lesson’s material. Specifically, I think my classroom management is becoming a little more automatic, in a sense. Having been in the classroom consistently through the week and actually teaching has allowed me to sort of develop a new rapport with the students. They are becoming more understanding of my expectations. For example, today I tried something new, after each math homework question I explained on the Smart Board – with the help and input of students – I asked students to use their thumbs to show me how they were feeling. This was not something I had planned on doing. But, because the students had told me previously they had a difficult time with the homework, I thought I need to keep track of their understanding.

And then something really interesting happened. We came to a question, which no one could understand. Neither the students nor I. So, then my s.a. tried to solve it as well. Even that didn’t work. So, we were stuck. We knew the answer, but could not come up with the proper steps behind the solution. At first we thought we would come back to the question. And my s.a. tried solving it on her own. But, then our new student had the answer. However, this student is really shy and my s.a. actually asked her if she had the answer. What was interesting was that at the beginning of the lesson, this student had shared her answer. But, for some reason did not want to share her answer for the tricky question. I think maybe she may have been hesitant because she thought her process might have been incorrect as well. This was such a good example of a situation where sometimes the teacher does not have an answer right away.

Something I would like to work on for the next week is my pacing. I think because in the back of my head I know that this group of students catches on to new concepts quite quickly, I go through material pretty quick. So, today during the math lesson, I asked students to let me know if and when I’m going too fast because this will also help me recognize how much they are understanding. I can’t believe this week is already over, I look forward to starting back up next Tuesday!