Celebrating Small Successes

Today went pretty well. :-)
That's a big thing.

So far the main thing that I've been teaching has been phonics and math. I'm starting to learn how to get the kids excited about the (boring) phonics readers. I just need to keep finding ways to connect it to their lives and make it real for them. The kids are at such different levels that it's hard to do the same or even similar things with all of them. This week I planned 3 different lessons for the 3 different ability groups using the same book. I went through 2 of them today (low and middle) and I need to do 2 tomorrow (high and another middle). They went alright. Some of the kids are just not interested in being a part of the group. I don't yet know how to help them engage when they are having a rough day.

The math lessons that I've been leading are more review than lessons, but it counts nonetheless. ;-) Monday I led them in a game, too, which went fine. The behaviors were pretty good on Monday, too. Today was a different story as far as behaviors were concerned (we had a talk about how to behave in the hallway, there were a couple of almost fights...), but the math calendar lesson went well. :-) It started as a mistake. We didn't have enough copies made of the sheet...I trusted that my CT had made them (which she did)...we just didn't have them all in the right place. So, I improvised. She made the copies and I explained to the class what happened and said that I was going to pick a "super helper" for the day to sit in the teacher chair and use their paper with the document reader. I even let him call on some students to help him with certain problems. (I picked one of the kids that isn't always completely engaged...it forced him to pay attention, and he did a great job!) The other kids liked it, too, I think...and we are going to do it again tomorrow. I also started this, 'if you're doing the right thing you can put a smiley face on the top of your paper'. So tomorrow I need to reward the ones that had smileys on the top of their papers (all of them) to start the positive reinforcement for being on task and getting their work done well. Overall, it was a good day. :-). I thought I would talk about the positive for once.

Alright, time for dinner and then a lot of homework tonight. <3