Period

Today I had the pleasure of acting as the lead teacher for the entire afternoon. Mike (my mentor teacher) had a substitute today and he asked that the substitute allow me to take the class over. I taught the children a lesson about what a period is and we played a game to figure out where a period goes and how you know a what a sentence is. I read a story out loud to the group called, My Mom Travels A lot. The students looked for the periods in the story and pointed them out to me as I read. I had made some sentences on sentence strips and cut the periods off the ends. I had three volunteers hold the three sentences standing next to each other and I read them all as one sentence. I asked the class why that did not sound right. Then, I brought out the cut-off periods and asked for three more volunteers to hold the periods and place them in the right location. We played this game again as a group with different sentences and then the children went to their seats to work on their own sentences with periods. After writing workshop I let the children explore making patterns using patter blocks, drawing materials, and other art mediums. When they had completed their patterns, we went outside for a much needed recess. After recess we came back inside for a special treat. Today was a special day because my students were getting introduced to their reading buddies from the 5th grade. One of the students in the 5th grade is blind. In order to make this as smooth as possible, the blind student and her mother came into the classroom to tell my class some information and to answer questions. One of the little boys asked why one of her eyes was bigger than the other and the bling girl explained that she had a brain tumor when she was a baby that pushed her eye out. In addition, my students asked how she could go swim, ski, and play the violin. The blind student replied, "just like you." She said that there are many activities that you do not need your site in order to do. I thought this experience was so neat and I felt so lucky to have such a great introduction to a wonderful student that is now a part of our school community. I believe that my students will learn a great deal from being reading buddies with this class.