Student Teaching... Woo!

I survived my first week of student teaching (and the first day of the second week) :) that deserves a "Wooo"! For those of you who don't know I'm in a grade 5/6 split with an assortment of students.

My first week was spent in observation. Some of the students don't take well to change, so I spent a lot of time talking with them about their school work and interests. I think that the more comfortable the students are with me being in the classroom the better they will adapt to me teaching them.

Tomorrow will be my first time teaching the students a lesson I have prepared. I'm doing a science unit on properties of and changes in substances which is really awesome because majority of it is hands on. Tomorrow will just be an introduction to the unit, so nothing really exciting for the students to do. I plan on demonstrating how baking soda and vinegar mixed will create a gas, and then students will create word splashes, as title pages, for this unit. Nothing overly exciting but it is a short period time wise. I'm going to wait until after spring break to get into the fun stuff. No sense starting something that they will forget during that week away. So if anyone out there has any websites, ideas, advice, plans, assessment, ect for this unit please feel free to pass it on this way :) (Grade 5, Cluster 2).

Also my class does regular 'journal' time so I have prepared a writing activity for them to do tomorrow. I’m not going to share any details of that in this post because I am still unsure exactly how I'm going about it.

Overall I'm really excited to get lessons planned and materials gathered over spring break for the following five weeks. I have a great CT that is willing to let me just jump in and do my thing. I think it is important to do as much teaching, managing, and planning as possible every placement. May as well get the most out of it!