Week 4 - The Blizzard

February 3, 2011

So far our only day of school this week was Monday, thanks to the blizzard! Although on Monday I did teach the entire day by myself (for the second time). We were in the language lab on Monday and we continued working with the preterit for Spanish II and vocabulary with Spanish V.

Once again, first period was pretty rough. I wrote a few comprehension questions about a song we listened to for Spanish II and they ended up being too opened ended for the students. Thankfully, second period is a prep and John and I were able to make some changes to the activity to make it easier for the kids to follow. We gave them options to choose for the comprehension questions. The same lesson went MUCH smoother the rest of the day. In the language lab at CHS we use a program called Virtuoso and everyone wears headsets and they hear me talk to them and I can display what we are working on with the projector. With the program, Virtuoso, I can put the students into pairs so they can hear and talk to another student. I can also launch files, like the song we listened to, to each of their PCs. It is a really neat program and I am getting more and more comfortable using it.

On Monday John stayed in the classroom for the first two periods but he felt comfortable enough to leave for the last three and work on something else in his classroom. I think that it is a good sign that he is feeling confident with my teaching and allowing me more time to work on my transition into being the main teacher. He and I are still doing a lot of collaborating with planning, which I am very thankful for!

I love working with the Spanish V kids. They are a small group and they are in the advanced level because they enjoy and care about Spanish. They are able to hold lengthier conversations and discuss opinions about things. They understand jokes in the language and enjoy playing back. Spanish V does a conversation journal and I have taken those over. Each student has a notebook and we take turns writing a page or so to one another. The teacher gives a prompt and the students respond. Prompts could be about a topic we are currently studying, it could work with a grammar structure we are working with, or relate to current events etc. It has been fun for me because it allows me to get to know the students on a more personal level and through writing.

While I have had my three days off of school I have gotten myself caught up with some BSU requirements. So that has been nice ☺ We will see what happens tomorrow with school…. Some Muncie area schools are already closed for Friday, 6 day weekend for them! We had some sunshine today and that helped melt some snow but there are supposed to be extremely low temps tonight and everything might freeze over again??

February 4, 2011

Our first day back at school since Monday! We had a delay so the day flew by and we had so much to cover. I taught the whole day and the classes flew by. We were barely able to get much done and everything is pushed back. This week was my first week doing a lot of planning and trying to teach the whole week, but life doesn’t always go as we plan ☺ I am learning that lesson in a few different areas of my life right now.

So this was technically our 4th week of school and I have missed a total of 5 days, so I have missed a week of school. Because we are student teaching and we follow Ball State’s schedule, those are missed days that I will not be making up. Which kind of stinks because that is a week of experience and time in the classroom I wont be getting back this semester. I am getting ready to watch the Super Bowl (mainly for the commercials ☺) and work on some school stuff for this week.