New Oxford Entry

If there could be a new entry in the Oxford English Dictionary it would be;

Flexability(adj) Teachers during the first few weeks of school.

My mentor teacher has been fantastic about including me in the real picture of scheduling and it has been an eye-opener. Our school is a Title One school, so the teachers juggle EL, ERR, RR, Title, and specials ensuring that every student is taught the core curriculum. Let me just say, wow.

My mentor teacher has allowed me to take over spelling, basal reading, some of the writing assignments, read aloud, vocabulary, and the bell work summary. She is easing me into the novels, history, and math lessons over the next couple of weeks so that I don't get overwhelmed. Math is an area of concern for our school and will be targeted for special focus, so I'm glad that is farther out on my planner.

I taught my first completely "original" lesson today on metaphors. It went well, but it certainly wasn't a smashing success that you'ld want to write home about. It was a good solid 30 minute lesson, and at least one student independently used the word (metaphor) correctly to identify a metaphor in his basal story during his reading group. I used several different classroom management techniques during the lesson to get them talking and working collaboratively. Since it's early in the year we are still building those relationships in our room and I am excited to watch them test their wings. Thursday and Friday are the similie lessons!