Today, we had a sub. I let go of all observations, because I was primarily the one teaching. My first reaction to sub day is: overwhelming. It was quite a surprise to wake up from texts and voicemails from my teacher saying that she would not be there, and that I was included in the sub plans as the one teaching lessons. I got to school at 7:45 like usual, and had only about ten minutes to prepare for the day once finishing talking to Jessica, which was mostly used talking to the substitute. I was still writing the morning message when the kids walked in.
Math overall went well. I was doing it mostly on the fly, so had a very poor timing plan. We were looking at volume, and the students were filling up rectangular prisms with centimeter cubes to count their volume. It was an engaging lesson, and the students were interested in it. I flashed back to using manipulatives in my fourth grade room, and made sure to give directions on where the cubes should be and when. There was one time when they were playing and getting there attention took too long. I handled this by telling them to put both hands in the air, then counted down from ten as they put the cubes in the center of the table and out of distraction's way. I did majorly botch my timing though. Wednesday is one of our two days that math is extra long. It's over an hour, and I've had no teaching in front of this class yet, so I could 'feel' when time was running short. I glanced at the clock and freaked out because it was a quarter after, and music started in a few minutes. I wrapped up very quickly and had the students put their materials away. Just before I had them line up, the sub came up to me and told me we still had an hour. It was kind of a major fail. I decided to not have them get their math out again because I'd done everything in the Everyday Math plan. I handled it though, and had them do a math game, then some independent reading, then read poems out loud to them and reviewed their poetry elements. My host teacher was checking in a lot throughout the day, and had us facetime her a few times. It was really helpful to have her presence there in the room, and she LOVED being able to see her students. We used about five minutes before music to talk to her, and checked in with her via video twice throughout the day.
The next thing I want to comment on is reading. My teacher had told me another teacher was coming in to teach the lesson. I found out at lunch (about a half an hour of class time before reading) that he was not. I also had to prepare this in about five minutes, although it wasn't impossible because they have a set reading curriculum (it was just stressful). The students were working with a song, and it was a really fun lesson to teach and see them sing and get into.
Management was, as always, a challenge. I felt confident about it for most of the day, with the exception of the end of the day. The students had EDL (an after school program), so their end of the day schedule was not what I am most used to. I don't yet know if busers line up first, carpoolers, etc. It was hard to keep management strong when I was trying to figure everything else out. On top of that, I had one student (my difficult case study student) in a very bad mood and making things hard for me. I was also trying to organize passing out their take home folders. I'm not experienced enough with the end of the day to do this fluently, so things got a little dicey. I asked the substitute what she thought of my management, and she said overall it was effective. I felt pretty good about it, and in the areas where it wasn't strong, I feel like I have ideas for what I could have done differently.
It was a really good experience for me. I left school feeling busy and a little overwhelmed, but great! It felt really good to be delivering lessons and being constantly in front of the classroom. I only wish I'd had more time to prepare, and a bit more confidence with routines, especially at the end of the day.
There was no question of the day today, as my teacher was out. I used today's experience as an influence for tomorrow's question...keep posted!
I was anxious just reading your post about Wednesday's happenings! One thing I loved was the description of how you used technology to have Jessica "in the room" for certain parts of the day. That's so 21st centure.
ReplyDeleteWhen Jessica called me on Wednesday to say she was stranded in Red Wing, asking if I thought it was ok to have you teach the math lesson solo that you'd planned together on Tuesday, I knew she was developing faith in your teaching skills and your relationship with students.
It's good to see that you ended the day with a good perspective on what you accomplished given the last-minute context in which it all happened.