Thursday, November 6, 2008

Feeling Overwhelmed

So my full subbing is ending this week and I am feeling completely overwhelmed. I am so glad my teacher will be back next week. The difficulty is arising because I have had many changes to my schedule. My math class consists of students from five different classes. I have 14 students, 6 of whom are gone this week to Mountain School. So I have had to change gears with my lessons. I don't want to teach half of the class something new while the other half misses out and then need to reteach it all when half of the class already has heard it.

Next week we have Monday for instruction, no school on Tuesday and we leave for Mountain School on Wednesday and get back on Friday. So next week will be pretty easy, instruction wise. Monday's are easy to plan for because the students are gone to specialists in the afternoons so I just need to plan for Reading and Math.

One of my struggles is that our document camera is on my workdesk, but is not connected, so I am unable to incorporate it into my instruction methods. Modeling with the document camera would be best, but currently I must either project through images on the computer alone (when the network is up and running) or draw on the whiteboard (which is often a sloppy representation of what I expect from my students).

I have also had to start thinking about moving my students to new seats. They are very chatty and are unable to focus on the work at hand. However, sometimes I wonder if I am directing their attention in the best ways. My biggest challenge in my class is reaching the wide span of students. I have a student who speaks little English and is reading at a primer level up to her classmate who is reading at a high school level. I am struggling to not let her fall through the cracks and get left behind because I'm moving too fast and not leave out my other student because he is so far ahead.

I have begun a creative writing process with my students and want to incorporate the 6+1 Traits that I know are best practice, but I am struggling because the school does not have a writing curriculum aside from Step Up to Writing which I feel is holding my stronger writers back. All of the kids have loved writing their stories and I am struggling to attend to their writing needs at such varying levels and to encourage them to write what they want in their creative writing pieces.

So much to say and not enough time. Recess is over. Back to work.

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