Now that students and teachers are beginning to get into a routine I am feeling not only more comfortable, but more confident that things will go smoothly as I continue to take over various subjects this Fall. I have been watching my mentor teacher as we try and navigate our way through the nearly 3 hour reading block we teach. This will be the next subject(s) that I take over beginning September 20th. I am both excited and nervous! It is a large chunk of time and I can think of so much that I would like to accomplish, but I am still working on trying to sort it in a way that will provide my struggling students with the structure and routine that they need to be successful.
In addition to observing my mentor teacher during reading I also started going across the hall to the Social Studies teacher. I will be teaching Social Studies instead of the health and English classes my regular mentor teacher has because of my specialization! Although I have only been in the SS class for 2 days I am already excited about being in my content area... finally! Some things I hope to accomplish in SS would be to try and have students use a web quest during one chapter, and I would like to create some stations at some point.
Time seems to be flying by, but I hope just stay ahead of the game and keep up! The only concerns I have right now are with my Action Research project. My project ideas are still very fuzzy because of the changes that are still being made in the 5Th grade writing block. I am waiting to see what the final decisions are before I commit to a specific research question or strategy to implement!
The great thing about inquiry is that it welcomes change....so while you want to carefully design your project, you can also make changes to the design as they become necessary. I hope you know that I'm available at any point for any questions you have.
ReplyDeleteI was struck by your opening comments in which you described how difficult it is to find a balance between structure and freedom (or choice). I agree! And I think that's always a dilemma at every level of education (as I still struggle with it in higher ed). I'm always wondering about the kinds of structures we design for our students. It seems that even those need to be differentiated depending on our students. What is structure for one student, may feel confining to another. I wonder how we can involve our students more in helping us to make the instructional decisions we need to make. What kinds of data could we collect that would help us make some of these decisions? I know that 3 hours seems like a very long block of time, but I'm also thinking that once you're teaching that block, the time will fly by. We can only hope that your students will be so engaged in learning that they feel the time is flying by as well.
Can't wait to hear what you plan for social studies. What will your fifth graders be studying when you teach?