Tuesday--Subbing!

Tuesday:

Tuesday was my first official day of subbing in my classroom. My mentor teacher had to attend assessment training and so I was the lead teacher all day. In the morning I had the assistance of Alexis, which was wonderful, and the afternoon it was just me. When I started the day off with Morning Meeting, I could see instantly that if I did not put my foot down I was going to get walked all over. During Morning Meeting the children were being silly and not listening very well so I rushed through it and got them off to gym. While they were in gym I thought about how I wanted to be the fun teacher that all the students liked, but without classroom management there is no way for me to have that freedom, so I would need to establish some boundaries first. I also found that if I showed an interest in the task at hand, then the children would be interested in, but if not than why would I expect them to be interested and engaged in an activity that I was not? When they came back from gym I felt like the whole classroom environment changed. We did some great exercises with word families. They found words that had the “en” sound and letters in them. They came up with some simple words like ten, hen, and men but they also found attention, detention, and women! I was so impressed! We also read a story called Ira Sleeps Over and I am not even exaggerating when I say that they children were silent! It was amazing. I felt so much more confident as a teacher and I was so glad that I was able to keep the children’s attention and focus. I made sure that all the activities were presented in a fun and exciting way for the rest of the day in order to eliminate bad behavior. I had a great time and I am already scheduled to sub again next month!