This week was our first full week of school.

I was able to start teaching more and

more this week which was great. I started off the week on Monday taking over calendar,
Heggerty and handwriting. The calendar and Heggerty are recorded and zoomed in by
our class friends who are blended or staying at home. Being recorded made me
nervous at first but now that I am used to it and realize that everyone messes up (even
teachers) it is okay. I like starting off the day with the students because calendar and
Heggerty are first thing in the morning. I get to grab their attention right away.
This week I also sat in with our reading specialists and learned how to asses’
students. I got to sit in on 2 different assessments using dibbles. I think that getting to
see it does really helped me understand my own classroom’s charts and grouping. It
was nice to see it done on older grades as well because I could see what is expected of
them. This year assessments are a little different because some students are behind
due to lack of school for 6 months during COVID. The assessments that I got to see are
done 3 times a year and then compared.
This week we also took a nature walk for our season’s unit to Stackhouse Park.
We go here once a season and take pictures, write about and draw what we see each
time. This was a super fun activity for students to do. The kids liked to see the trees and
leaves on the ground and we talked about things that we saw that told us it was still
summer. (since fall starts next week we just got it in) When we came back to the room
everyone talked about what they saw and began journaling.

I am doing my unit lesson the first week of October so I have been working on
those lesson plans and getting everything together. I also started my portfolio. I am
almost done with my outline of the unit plan so I know that can go in the portfolio as
well.
My mentor gave me a book about whole brain learning and it is amazing! I am so
happy that she gave it to me because a lot of the things in there are about behavior and
how to manage it. I can not wait to use this in my teaching.