3rd grade and mcdonalds and lovin' it.

This past month I have been spending 3 afternoons a week in a 3rd grade classroom! My teaching partner and I have been teaching lessons and helping out...and we are loving it!!!! I just wanted to update everyone on my adventures of teaching so far....I don't have any pictures of my time at the school, but hopefully I can get some after we do a project we have planned next week!

The first week out in the schools we did a lot of observing. I found this very beneficial. We were able to see how our teacher worked with the students and see how the students reacted to different situations! Valuable information for us newbies in the classroom! That first week we started doing "Calendar Time" with the kiddos! This is a routine they do everyday that involved the calendar, and a lot of different types of math! The kids really enjoy it, and after we started getting the hang of the routine we enjoyed it as well!!!

The second week we added on a few more responsibilities. We each were in charge of a Math Center. One of us would do the main lesson with a group of kids, the other would help them out with their worksheets, or play different games with them (depending on the day), and then the 3rd group was either working on math on the computer or working with our teacher on a variety of things! They rotate around to the different groups and so we get to see all of the kids and have a lot of time to get to know them as a learner and as an individual! I really enjoy the set up of the groups...it works really well for this group of students!! I was also able to be in charge of a classroom meeting, where we discussed the topic of CARING! An extremely important topic in the 3rd grade! When asking the students how they could show they care there were an abundant amount of wonderful answers!

"We can help our teacher pick up the classroom!" 

"We can sit with people at lunch when they are by themselves"

"I can share my toys with my sister" 

"We can stop talking so much in class!" (This one is the one I think they could spend some time focusing on!) 

The list went on and on with wonderful advice about caring!! Oh the ideas of a 3rd grader!!!

Our last day there that week we taught a Social Studies Economics Unit! We discussed goods and services that different markets around Manhattan provide! We also read a book (I'm having a brain fart on the name of it right now...sorry!) and throughout the book they were to identify different goods and services that were mentioned! The kids did a wonderful job (minus being a little chatty....) and they really started to understand the concept!

Last week, (our 3rd week) we did another Economics lesson where we had the students break up into groups (this became a little chaotic, but we worked through it!) The groups were each assigned a market and they had to list at least 3 goods and 3 services that market provided. They loved brainstorming different ideas and sharing them with the class! You could tell they understood the concept! We also continued with math during the week. The kids have been working on multiplication, so it has been fun to see them learning more and becoming more advanced with it! Some of those 3rd graders are even quicker than me sometimes! 

We also taught a Literacy lesson this week! We read the book The Great Fuzz Frenzy to the 3rd graders, but we only READ it to them, we did not show them ANY pictures! We even covered up the front cover so they couldn't see it! We had them focus on the descriptive words throughout the book and see if they could figure out what object enters into the story. The book uses words like "fuzzy" and "round" to describe the object. The kids then used those words to figure out what the object was! We had some that had read the book and already knew the answer...we had some students guess it was a caterpillar, a cotton ball, and even a cat (maybe a little off base with that one!) The real answer was a......tennis ball! Whether they got the answer right or wrong it didn't matter, they loved writing and drawing about it and were DYING to share their ideas with their classmates!

 

We only have one more week with the kids (after Thanksgiving break) and I am sad to see my time there go by so quickly...but I sure have enjoyed getting to know all of the students!!! We still have time to finish up our Economics unit, teach a few more math lessons, and do another literacy lesson with them!! I can't wait!!!! 

I also wanted to share a few quick photos of a random adventure I had one night when my roommate and I started to crave french fries! Ok...well she was craving them, and then after I heard the word "fries" I was hooked! We knew we wouldn't be able to fall asleep thinking about fries, so we HAD...(yes HAD) to go get some!!! We were in our pajamas, so we added to our outfits by putting on some robes and slippers and decided to go through the drive thru!!!! It was a random adventure that I thought was worth mentioning and sharing the great photo opp. we had!!!

 

Thanks for the wonderful memory Britt!!! 

xoxo,

Shelbi