This week, the most eventful moments stuck out in my mind was involving my Touch Math group for my action research project. It is this small group of students within this classroom that continually inspire me and remind me of why I want to be a teacher. I have seen so much growth in those 7 students that it just amazes me! To think that from the first day when those students did not even know how to add 1+0 and now they can add much higher numbers such as 8+3 without even thinking about it is awesome! I have been giving the students 16 problems to work on each day during the 30 minute session we have. At first the students were a little overwhelmed, but now they seem to enjoy this "fun" break from the day. In fact, I have heard several students in my group say that they now love math. And as a teacher, those are words we LOVE to hear! So, all in all, this group has truly shown me how powerful it can be to be a teacher. Sometimes you do not know how you really were able to teach them what you have, but at some point it just clicks. It's a wonderful thing to know you were a part of, that is for sure!
This week I also discussed my action plan with my host-teacher for the upcoming weeks within my placement. I know that one of my weakest points of my teaching is my behavior management and transitioning. So, in order to help strengthen these areas, I am going to try different ways to engage the students between lessons and I am also going to try new methods for behavior. I may try writing RECESS on the board in the morning and as the day progresses; I will erase one letter if the class is not listening to my instructions or if they are misbehaving. Once all of the letters have been erased, then that means the students lose 5-10 minutes of their recess as a whole class. (This is the part I am not sure about yet...especially if it is our week to have recess duty.) I am also going to try and think of other ways to reduce the amount of behavioral issues within our classroom because they are becoming a true distraction within our lessons and they are causing students to lose time for learning. So this is definitely something that I need to work on.
This week, we also started guided reading groups. I was a little nervous at first because I have never really run a guided reading group all on my own. However, it has been a blast and the students are great to work with. It amazes me how well they can read at this age, and they are such great writers as well! I am still getting used to the amount of work a 1st grader can handle, so that is something I need to continually think about when I write their weekly agenda for reading groups! I have to turn my mind away from my usual 5th grade level and switch it over to 1st grade mode! This is very hard at times, but I am slowly learning. It just takes a few times for me to gauge their abilities and understand what amount of homework they can accomplish and handle each evening.
For next week, I am going to try my hardest to work on behavior, transitions and concentrate on my action research since I am entering my third week. The next week I will give the group their first assessment before we start taking away the touch points from the math problems themselves. I am getting anxious to see the results! Although, as of right now, I truly feel that if I teach first grade in the future, I am going to try to use this method to teach students addition and subtraction. It was helped my group of 7 students immensely!
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