Reflection

I am currently working on putting in my paperwork for my intern sub certificate. It's taken a bit longer than I had thought at first, but I will have it done soon. Teresa leaves on Tuesday to Italy for a conference as an educator representative and during that time I'm full on. It's going to be fun and challenging and quite the learning experience. I collaborate both with Teresa and Michael (we swap kids through the day) frequently and I will be taking on the task of preparing the classes for Mountain School. I also collaborate with the other three teachers in the upper grades (another 5/6 and one 5 and one 6 grade class).

This week I filled in for one of the teacher's reading groups because she was at Mountain School and our reading groups are spread throughout the school. Teaching a class of 3-6 graders is an interesting mix. These students are at a 4.2 reading level and so the third graders are a year ahead and the six graders are almost two full grades behind. It also gave me a feel for being a sub in the future. Some of the kids were great and helped me out even if I didn't know them before and I asked the kids from my homeroom to help me out when I needed to. I even got an "Encouraging Word" slip from one of the kids. Today as I was going down the hallway I got a plethora of "hellos", hugs, and smiles.

I'm still not sure what grade I want to look for a job in, they all have such a spread of challenges and ... what's the word I'm looking for... benefits?

Right now I'm actually poring over my math book and trying to decide how I'm going to move forward. This year I thought I was teaching sixth grade math but was moved into "Highly Capable" math with sixth graders (and a few fifth graders with exceptional scores). However, only one of our students is really at the "HiCap" level, the rest are merely above the rest of their classmates. I'm trying to decide how to move them forward and align the new Performance Expectations in math with this curriculum and at the same time be sure to teach what they will be tested on with the current GLEs because the PEs are not included on the WASL this year although we are teaching to them.

I'm not too worried about them understanding estimating fractions, but more how I approach estimating adding fractions to them...

Back to the math book!