I really cleaned up my lesson planning methods for this week. Now I've got a spreadsheet that looks like this for each day:
I've still been struggling with timing a bit, so it's been helpful to have it super clearly laid out down to the minute. My spreadsheet even adds up all the time for me! It never goes exactly as planned, but I'm getting better at estimating. It's also getting easier to figure out pacing this way, so that I spread out different kinds of activities throughout the class period to keep it from getting monotonous.
We've been working on our first essay, and Monday was conference day. I split the kids evenly between me and Coach Gates, which I think went okay but it does frustrate me to not have the time to talk 1-on-1 with every student in that setting. I get to work with them every day when I go walking around to help, but I'm realizing that lots of them act way differently at their table groups than just with me. K'aliyah in particular is so much more focused and willing to work with me instead of tease me the second she's across the room away from her girlfriend. Maybe in the future it would be good to set aside an entire day for conferences, not just part of the period. Or at least find a way to debrief with my co-teacher about whoever they ended up conferencing with. I just hate to be out of the loop on what all my students need.
The best part of this recent week was that I remembered about playing!!!! I became a teacher because I want to play, and I was getting so caught up in trying my best to do things "right" (often through emulating my mentor teacher) that I forgot about doing things that I like. For one of my class slides where we had some reflection/discussion time, I made the background "The Thinker" by Rodin. I really like his work, and it made me smile to have it up there and to show some of these students new things that are beyond the scope of this class. I want to thread in more stuff like that. I also added in some cute pictures of my best friend's cat, Mocha, to celebrate Friday and that was really popular. It makes me think that having regular stuff like that as just part of the classroom atmosphere would probably do a lot to make kids feel more comfortable and willing to be present.
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