Assignment One- Reflections.....

The school that I am student teaching at is located in Aitkin, MN. Which is located 30 miles East of Brainerd, MN. The 3rd grade is made up of 68 students, but grades 5th, 6th, and 2nd, 1st, and Kindergarten range from 90-119 students per grade. The atmosphere is small town, Aitkin's population is 1,900. Aitkin is in up-north Minnesota so there is a lot of outdoor activities offered year round. There are 365 area lakes, making fishing and outdoor activities a big part of the everyday life for a lot of my students. My classroom consists of 23 students, 11 girls and 12 boys. They are all Caucasian, and most live out of the city limits (we have no students who walk to and from school). Our classroom has a moby-board and clickers that are implemented for students to take quizzes on. There is a projector that is also used. The school just purchased two document camera's last week.


List of Goals:
To be able to effectively teach by including an anticipatory set and closure without over thinking it or preparing many hours for it.
To experience Parent-Teacher conferences
To get involved in one ore more activities outside of the classroom
To attend a school board or some other meeting
To get great reviews and feedback from both my university supervisor but also my cooperating teacher

At this point, my primary concerns are....holding my students engaged when I explain objectives in the beginning of my lessons.


At this point, I am looking forward to most...is getting back their Star Math scores, and their reading levels and see how much they increase by the time I leave.


Take a look at my classroom!!!!!!
Here are some parts of the Reading area:






Here is part of the Math area:

Author Studies

Each month in our 3rd grade classroom we will be focusing on two authors. One- Picture book author study and One- Chapter book Author study.
Here is a pic. of the pictures I printed and laminated in our Author Study area by our reading nook:

During the first day we did an ice-breaker activity for the students to build self-esteem and learn more about their classmates.
At first we hung the apples and took them down as each student attended open house:

This is a pile of the finished product:


We also built a list of class rules:

Got my desk set-up

Today is Labor Day, I went in and got my desk set up :) So excited to meet the students tomorrow!!!!

I started two days early! Mr. Williams had me come in on Monday, August 30th at 12:00 to set up my desk and give some input on the classroom. I ended up staying for 5 hours! It has been such a fun experience!! Day 1 of Workshops was the 31st, so I started the following day. I have learned so many awesome things and met so many cool people!

This weekend I tackled making homemade bookmarks for my student's as incentives once they complete a goal that we will set on the first day of class. I put a lot of time and creativity into them and made them all differently, It was fun! See pictures below :) (As of now, we have 23 students in our classroom).