Blog Weekly Post 9

After forty one days in school you would not think that the students would still be able to surprise me. I usually feel like I know my students and their understanding fairly well and then suddenly I realize that a certain student knows nothing about what I have taught them. I try to mentally assess my students every day. I am constantly asking questions and calling on certain students to see if they know the answer. I have come to realize that assessing Kindergarten students is very difficult. Even with three teachers in the room, it is hard to get one on one time with a single student. I do not always think that whole class assignments are a great was to assess my students either. I think that sometimes they do not understand the directions or do not realize what I am asking of them. They need more direct instruction geared directly towards them. I still have two students that do not know their colors. The rest of my students were assessed on colors before we came back to school and passed except for these two. We did not directly work with them on their colors because that is something that we talk about and use daily in our classroom. I assumed that they could pick them up so quickly like everything else. This week I realized that they still are confusing their colors. I was so concerned that I even gave the one student a color blindness test. I have been better at trying to pull students individually when I have time to work with them one on one on a specific skill that they are lacking. This week my teacher was at a conference for two days. I just started my six weeks of full time teaching so I was nervous on how things would go. I felt like things went really well! My students behaved well and really worked hard for me. I think that they were so used to me teaching mostly anyway that it did not interrupt their schedule so they were able to handle the change better. It is exciting to feel a part of the classroom and have the students respect you as a teacher. But, I give Laura lots of credit because it is exhausting. This week was my first week of full time teaching. I have been finding planning to be difficult. There are so many things that need covered in such a small amount of time. I want to make sure that ALL of my students have a good understanding of a concept before I move on to something else but then I also do not want to bore other students with staying on the same idea for too long. I think that it is much harder to plan in Kindergarten because you do not have a book telling you what to do next or giving you any ideas on how to teach something. I also think that the students learn more because you really work hard on your planning and make sure that it is really worthwhile to your students learning.