August Twenty, Two Thousand + Ten

The first week of the internship has officially finished. I did a full day of teaching today. I notice that when my MT is off and there is a casual on the class there are different class dynamics.

The day went well and I spoke to two parents in the morning and another in the afternoon. When I compare this to my time within Early Childhood settings, I notice a huge difference. Parents don't tend to come and talk with teachers unless there is something important that needs to be discussed.

I feel that if it was only me in the room, without the other teacher I think that the children would have been a little less noisy during times. Though I feel that even though this wasn't the case, that I was able to manage the children's behaviour effectively but I need to find new ways to do this, rather than using hands on heads.

When I had the children draw their parrots {the letter of the week is Pp}. They were a little confused at first as I had given them a blank sheet of paper and a number of bright oil pastels and crayons. Once we went through what a parrot has, its features, I was in awe and amazed at some of the fantastic parrots that the children had drawn. I sometimes feel that creativity can be limited as we can assume that they cannot do something, rather than allowing the children to try.

I am finding that having the children lay down of an afternoon, and be very still, works extremely well for allowing the children to relax after lunch. I think that I need to continue to use this.

On my other blog and its facebook fan page I put out a question about reward systems/charts and asked others what they use and what works for them. When a lot of them were specific to their own children, I asked if any were K-2 teachers and what they used. I was pleasantly surprised when I received a comment and it was of where she used dollars within the classroom and writes on them what they are awarded for and at the end of four weeks they are counted and a prize award to the table with the most dollars.

I have decided to use this within my classroom as a reward system so that I am able to see what works and doesn't work whilst I am there. Though rather than being a group effort for their tables {as they are very rarely at their tables} I will be doing individual ones. I just need to figure out what to use for each person to hold the money. Also I will be colour coding the notes, so yellow will be for listening, red for working with others, etc. I am thinking that once each child gets to ten, I will then give out an award stating what they had achieved over the last ten dollars. I feel that this will provide a talking point between home and school, and will be more than a lucky dip.

During recess and lunch, both today and yesterday I had the opportunity to speak and discuss with a number of different staff. I spoke with a casual teacher, as she has just finished her degree and was great to see a recently graduated teacher that I can discuss with about a number of different things. Also with other members on the teaching team at the school. I am really feeling a part of the team.

This weekend I will be preparing for the week ahead as I am now planning for everyday as well as the one page document to hand in to the unit conveyor.