Week+9+Experience


 * Oct. 25th, 2010 - Oct. 29th, 2010**

It's incredible how quickly the days fly by when you're immersed in the world of teaching and learning! I'm so glad that this Monday was a teacher work day/student non-attendance day. This allowed Mandy & I to finish up our student's report cards, do a little more organizing around the classroom, and I wrapped up some really exciting plans for this week's lessons.

Since this many of our students will be Halloween this Sunday, we're doing some extra-special cooking and experimenting in Science: We'll be examining "Monsters from the Green Lagoon" - raisins floating in mountain dew soda to help us explore how carbon dioxide is less dense than the soda, making the raisins float and sink. We also have a "Goosebumps" lab where we will explore how our body has reflexes, like giving us goosebumps when we are chilly or afraid. Finally, we're going to explore and practice measuring by making "spooky witches' brew" - a delicious snack mix for our movie treat on Friday.

On Tuesday this week, we were joined by another new student. His arrival to our class made me realize something within myself as an exceptional student educator - we should never base our expectations of a child upon the paperwork (IEPs, behavior plans, cumulative files, etc) that supposedly describes that child. Instead, it's always better to wait and see for yourself! Before this awesome little guy came to our class, I have to admit, I was getting ready to be overwhelmed by what I expected his needs would be according to all the paperwork that preceded his arrival. However, it turns out that, although he has special needs like the rest of my kiddos, he's amazingly high functioning and his academic and social proficiencies just severely underestimated during testing - probably because an unfamiliar proctor didn't take much time to establish a positive rapport with the student. Anyway, I am thrilled he's a part of my classroom crowd because he's already taught me a little lesson on how to be a better teacher! Hooray! My last teacher-riffic observation from this week is that no matter how well you think you know your students, it's always better to prepare to be unprepared! Students are full of surprises and you never know what they'll hit you with next! For example, after teaching just moments of a carefully planned math lesson about the concepts of "greater than, less than, or equal to", I quickly discovered that my students - who I imagined might struggle to grasp the ideas - were masters at the skills and could demonstrate their understanding in a variety of ways! However, when it came to ordering numbers on the number line, they have many difficulties!?! Oh boy! It's funny how their little minds work!