Tuesday, June 26, 2012

First Week Teaching...COMPLETE!

So last week was officially my first week teaching and it went great! I absolutely adore my 9 little babies. They are all so unique in their own ways and bring a smile to my face each and every day. Of course I have my difficulties, especially with my little troublemaker, Robert, but when I see him smile, it just melts my heart...and not to mention the smile on my face when I see him "break it down" with his dance moves!

For the first 2 weeks I teach Reading and the last 2 weeks I will be teaching Math. Reading is so much fun with the kids, they are so engaged and love to listen to stories. I'm a little nervous to switch over to math next week because I'm finally getting comfortable with reading, but it will be a great learning experience.

Basically the day looks like this:

First, it's Academic Intervention Hour (AIH). During this time we divide the students into small groups based on their academic level. We work with students in reading for 30 minutes and then math for 30 minutes. For reading, I have my little lovebug Makaylan. She is such an advanced reader for her age so she is in her own group for AIH. She is at a reading level 14, where her peers are anywhere from not even knowing their phonemes or the second highest reader who is at a level 3. She is so smart! I work with her one on one to challenge her in order to strengthen her reading skills even more! Here is a picture of her reading Dr. Seuss, her favorite author!



Makaylan and her Dr. Seuss book we're reading!



After reading, we turn it over into Math Academic Intervention Hour where this week we are learning patterns, working on sorting, and counting to 20! My students are so great at these objectives, although some of them have trouble counting. Fortunately, my group for math are higher than some of the other groups. One of the students in the class, Arlando, doesn't even know what the number 1 looks like. It's so sad to me that he can't do these simple operations that he should be doing at this age..but then again, that's what Teach For America is for! It's our duty to save this generation from falling 
further into the gap, and we WILL get it done. 
"We can..we will..we must make it happen!" (Akin Elementary's motto). 


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