You win some, you lose some.

This week has been BUSY BUSY BUSY! It was my first full week of teaching and I am exhausted!! I also had my first observation this week so it was certainly one to remember. My kids have begun to open up to me as a teacher and not just as the lady who comes in to observe or help. I have a great bunch and I look forward to spending 9 more weeks with them.

I am going to start by telling about what we have done this week. This week we have been talking about the Enlightenment. I started teaching last Thursday so this has been our topic since then. On Tuesday I had them do an activity that was a complete disaster. They were to read a document and summarize the section they were assigned. I should have looked at it better because they didn't understand any of it. They could not pronounce the words and had no idea what it was saying. Luckily, there is a break between my first two classes and my last two classes and during planning my CE and I sat down and she helped me overhaul my lesson and the second half of the day went much smoother. We also had a mock EOG on Thursday so our schedule was messed up and our classes were shortened but I was allowed to administer the test so that was great experience for me. Now, for my favorite part. Today, with two of my classes we made memes based on the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers. They had a blast and I was pleasantly surprised with some of the things that they came up with. My other two classes did something different. After we finished our notes I gave them about ten minutes to look over their notes on the Enlightenment thinkers and highlight or underline their important ideas, while studying. I then put them into groups and assigned each group a different colored marker. Around the room I had that big paper hanging with Enlightenment thinkers names on it. They were to, as a group, come up with one thing they could remember about that person and put in on the paper with their color marker. I gave them about 2 or 3 minutes to complete each one. After they had come back around to their original paper they had to read what the other groups had written and come up with one sentence that explained the main idea the Enlightenment thinker had. When we come back to school on Thursday, for warm up, one person from each group will come up with their paper and tell us the ideas of the Enlightenment thinker and read their sentence. The other students will be checking their notes to make sure they highlighted the appropriate things. Overall, both classes did really well and I was very pleased with my first block, who usually has the hardest time with activities.

What I learned this week is that things do not always go as planned. In fact, they rarely do. It is important as a teacher to always have a plan B, C, D, and even a plan E because something will go wrong because the rule of the classroom is Murphy's law. I have grown a lot even this week I think because I did have a disastrous lesson the day before I was being observed and it messed up my plans for the entire week but I have been blessed with a wonderful CE. She has been fabulous and I am extremely lucky that she is willing to take her time to make sure I am successful. On the other hand, I also learned that some lessons go better than you expect. Today, the memes were so great. They did so well and I was extremely proud of the way they were able to create something so funny but that related to the topic. For next week, I hope to continue down the same path and grow with my students and hopefully plan some lessons and activities that can really help them dive into the material and make it meaningful for them.