Semaine six (Week 6)

            Monday was a field trip to the Art Institute. It was the first time I got to go on the field trip as a chaperone so that was a pretty cool experience. It was a colossal mess. One teacher who was sort of organizing the whole thing didn’t show up because she was sick, we got there almost an hour and a half early so we had to find a way to kill the time, half the fourth grade went to the park and the other half went to the bean, we didn’t get back at the same time so we started at different places and different times, that meant that some of the teachers who were supposed to talk about a few pieces of art weren’t there to do it, it was just a mess. As a kid field trips are always so much fun but now I understand how stressful it is as a teacher. Constantly making sure we have all the kids, double checking every room to make sure we aren’t missing a straggler, not only trying to teach them about the art but trying to make sure they stay far enough away and don’t touch anything, I swear it was going to give me a coronary. We have been talking about how paintings or art can tell a story without using any words in the couple days leading up to it. As a follow up assignment I had them pick their favorite piece of art and write their own story about it.  Despite all the chaos it was actually a really good field trip.

            Tuesday we had off for Lincoln’s birthday.

            Because of the short choppy week a lot of what we did in math was just review of the last few weeks. We worked with mean, median, mode a lot and then did some more review of area and perimeter. The students are having some issues with area and perimeter still so I’m just having them do more and more review and giving them other ways to think about how to remember them. They seem to have difficulties understanding length x width and want to multiply all of the sides together and no matter how much I explain it or how nothing works. I taught a science lesson on the Sun, Earth, and Moon that went really well. I had them stand up and try to feel the speed of the Earth spinning which was a fun way to get them interested and ready for the lesson. Then there was a collaboration meeting so the superintendant could hear what we already spent 2 hours going over, but I’m not going to get started on that whole issue. Then the day was over before I knew it.

            Thursday was more math review. Grades for progress reports were due today so that was another whole mess. Between the field trip, the day off, focusing on getting observed twice this week, a whole mess with a certain parent, it meant grades were on the back burner until last night and today. Over the past week we have gone through the grade book with whatever we had been getting graded and we had so many students with missing work it was ridiculous. Mrs. Z. had printed out other copies twice already so she was livid about the whole thing. What we couldn’t understand is that we knew the students had done the work, we had seen them do most of it, they just couldn’t find it. So now we are starting a new system where they submit their work at a point whether or not they finish it or not and then they can work on it when they have an extra minute here or there because we can’t have situations where we have half the class missing assignments. So we are going to see how that goes and what progress we make with that.

            Finally it was Friday. I had them do a review test prep in science since we went through it pretty fast. I had them do it and told them it wasn’t a quiz but they were freaking out about it anyways, I even told them I wasn’t going to grade it and I was just doing it to see if they comprehended the material I taught. I know now not to preface anything with the word “quiz” regardless if you’re saying that it’s NOT a quiz. Gave them a spelling test which 3 were absent because of gifted art, then 3 more left to go see the reading specialist, so by the time we were ready to move on to something else we were missing over a quarter of our class. I didn’t want to move on to any content teaching with that many kids gone, so I had some of them read their stories from the art institute out loud in front of the class. We had a really good moment with one of the students. He started the year borderline depressed because of a family trauma over the summer. He didn’t want to do anything in class, never felt like doing any work, and never wanted to be in school. When I told them they were going to read them out loud and they could sit in the special reading chair he jumped up to be the first one to read. Then the rest of the time we were reading them he asked if he could read his again. It was great to see him be that enthusiastic about something, especially reading something he wrote to the class. The other thing I had them do today was earn Friday fun day. I keep forgetting to start this from Monday but I talked to Mrs. Z. about it and she’s completely on board. Anyways, they were extremely rowdy in the morning so I told them they had to earn it, every hour they had to earn a check and they had to get 4 to get Friday fun day. After I told them that they were the most quiet and hard working group I have ever seen. They earned it easily and if they acted that way every day we would get through so much more material. However, 3 students were just non-stop talking and distracting other students. This was a pattern that was going on all week so Mrs. Z. said she was going to have a talk with them, then changed her mind and said that I should do it instead, and told me to just lay down the law and pretty much put the fear of God in them. Which I did. I didn’t enjoy doing it but enough was enough and they needed to hear it, plus two of them are one strike away from having to spend all day up with the principal in an in school suspension. I also taught a lesson for some standardized writing preparation, it went well for it being an extremely dry and boring topic. The kids handled it well and we got through it without a problem. All in all it was a crazy, choppy, messy week but I got through it in one piece and can’t wait to start a new one. I also can’t believe ISAT’s are in 2 weeks already.