Week 3

Another week has gone by already! This was my last week of observing. Next week, I will start teaching the 7th grade. I feel like I am prepared for next week. I tried to use my planning time wisely this week and got all of my lesson plans finished before the weekend! I think that the students will enjoy the writing activities that I have planned. I am going to be introducing the six traits of writing each week starting with the trait of ideas. They will be developing a narrative next week while focusing on this trait. I found a really neat prewriting activity in a Mrs. McCutchan's 6 Traits of Writing book. The students will brainstorm as a class ten characters, ten settings, ten problems, and ten solutions which will be numbered in four columns. The students will then use the last four digits of their phone numbers so that they have one character, setting, problem, and solution from each column. This will give them an original story to write. I hope that they get really creative with this assignment! I will also be teaching language and spelling next week. Language is a big part of my action research, so I will start teaching it using mostly just the book and workbooks. In week 8, I will start teaching language using other means such as magazines, newspapers, and novels. Mrs. McCutchan is teaching literature next week, but the following week, I will start the novel Nothing But the Truth with the seventh graders.

The sixth graders are constantly keeping Mrs. McCutchan and me on our toes! We have had a lot of laughs this week with this group! Mrs. Morris asked what I found the most challenging about the sixth graders. I think that one of the most challenging things about this class is the size compared to the other two classes. Also, we have a few students that need a lot of individualized attention. It is difficult to keep these students working and to give them extra help while at the same time teaching the rest of the class. Does anyone have suggestions for how to keep these students on task and to help them learn without slowing down the rest of the class?

This week has also exciting because we got to hear President Obama's speech to the students. I think that he did an excellent job addressing the children, and I hope that many of them will take what he said to heart. We had the seventh grade class when the address aired. They were attentive during the speech and journaled afterward about their own goals. I think that President Obama helped them to realize how important it is to do well in school and to set goals in life.