Reflection-First Week of Field!

So this was our first week in the field! It is very exciting I love field! So far on Monday, our first day, I got there really early because I was nervous to be on time, but hey at least I was on time. I was kind of nervous the first day because I hadn't gotten a chance to meet our cooperating teacher yet. My first impression of the teacher was that she was very in control, and a little intimidating. I really think there is a lot I can learn from her, especially as far as classroom management is concerned. We mostly observed her the first two days. We were just trying to get a feel of how things are run in her classroom. We go there from 8:00 AM until 11:30 PM (ish, we usually stay a little longer). At 8:00 AM that is when the, "early birds" get there. About ten students come first thing in the morning and the teacher does a reading comprehension study. This is when she basically does a Read Aloud with a picture book and asks them a lot of questions for comprehension. Then after that the kids do silent reading as the teacher calls back groups of students one group at a time to work with guided reading books. After this the teacher does a shared reading with the students. At this time it is about 9:00 AM and it is time for the, "lator gators" to arrive. Once the lator gators get there the class gets started working on math. They usually work together on story problems, then have some time to work on the problems alone. At 11:00 on Tues, Wed, and Thurs they have science rotations. After science the kids go to lunch and we go home. Today (Friday) we, Annie and I, each took over one of the guided reading groups and we will be working with them everyday for the rest of field. That is kind of nice because we are only required to do one guided reading lesson, but we will get to practice it about ten times. Wednesday was a really hard day because our cooperating teacher was actually gone that day and we had a substitute there with us. It was hard because the kids were being a little wild, with the sub, but we knew from watching the teacher what she would have said when. It was really hard for me, since I am a natural leader not to step in and tell the kids to settle down, but I didn't want to overstep the sub. All in all it went okay with the sub. The week so far has been good. I feel like I have learned a lot from the cooperating teacher. At the beginning of the week I thought that running a classroom with kids from the younger grades would be really overwhelming, but it seems a lot more manageable after watching it in action. I am really excited for next week when we can do more teaching!