Happy Thanksgiving!

I taught more yesterday in my field placement then I have any day since I began my student teaching-and it was absolutely exhausting. To start the day off, I ran journal time with the kids. This consists of me writing a question on the board, asking them individual what the answer is, writing it down for them under the line, and then having them rewrite it about the line. The question for yesterday was, "What are you thankful for?" Let me tell you, in a SPED classroom, you get some interesting answers. One girl gave me the traditional, "I am thankful for my family-my mommy my sister and my puppy." However, other students gave me answers such as, "my crayons" or "my marbles" or "pants!" I guess as long as you are thankful for something.... Seriously, who isn't thankful for pants?!

Next, we did morning business, which is a lesson I do every day. Each student has a job (schedule, calendar, weather, lunch, and pattern). One at a time we go through and do the jobs, until morning business is done. It always takes for every, because no one pays attention to each other, then someone doesn't want to do their assigned job, etc. It never fails to be a difficult task.

Then, it was story time! I had a thanksgiving book to read to my students, and it was a sticker book! Yay for interactive reading! While I read the story, I had students place stickers that match the part of the story we were reading. They seemed to love it, and the stickers helped them pay better attention to my reading. Win win!

After we read the story, the students had to worksheet that they filled out based on the story so that they could earn their pennies. (They earn pennies through out the day for good behavior, and then get "store time" a few times where they can spend their pennies on whatever reward they want, ie. iPad, computer, marbles, etc.)

 (My favorite part of the story was all the different animals.)

(I am going to eat turkey.)

Next was snack time, which I normally just observe, but yesterday I was in charge. Snack time is designed to help my students learn social behavior with their peers, so we give every student the wrong snack. Then, when they want some of their own snack, they have to ask whoever has it. And we never give them their whole snack, that way they have to keep asking. It's building relationships and language skills. As the teacher, I had to ask them questions to lead a peer discussion, but everyone is always too focused on their snack to talk. But, I learned lots about what they are going to eat for Thanksgiving... my students sure do like to talk about food!

After snack, I took 2 students down to the lower playground for recess-by myself! Normally I just have one, but we were short an EA. Of course, these two didn't want to play anywhere near each other. Recess totally stresses me out, due to the fact that our students frequently try to run away. Luckily  I came back with the same two kids I went down with. Yay!

When we came back from recess, I got a tiny break. It was math time, and they do most of their math work independently. I worked one on one with a student during that period, then took that same student to lunch, and lunch recess.

Following lunch recess, one of the general education teachers in my classroom asked me if I could come help her with her class, because her students seem to really like me (they are the students that my students sit with at lunch). I helped her take pictures of her students for their class project for a little while. They are a second grade class, and someday I really want to teach 2nd grade, so I like getting to observe in that classroom too.

The rest of the day was quite relaxing-Independent computer work time. The kids wouldn't stop talking about having no school on Thursday. They will probably be extremely rowdy next Monday after such a long break..... oh joy!