Journal Entry 3

When I first started student teaching, the thought of completely taking over someone else’s
classroom was very terrifying and daunting. However, this has been my second week of taking
over all teaching for Mrs. Karr’s fifth grade class and I believe that I am finally establishing a
successful routine. Lesson planning is much easier and smoother and the execution of the plans
as well. I find small group lessons to be particularly useful because it gives me a chance to
instantly tweak my lesson to teach the content better. Today for instance, we did an introductory
lesson about angles using paper plates. The first group easily grasped the concept as I made the
model with them on my own plate. For the second group, I decided to reuse the plate I had made
with the first group to save on resources. However, the second group was very confused as I
folded the plate to show them the different angles. I inferred that this was probably because I use
a plate that had lines on it that they had not drawn yet. For my third and fourth group (mainly
SPED and lower scoring students), I used a new paper plate every time and there was no
confusion at all about what we were doing.
Small groups are also great for working on my questioning skills, especially when trying to lead
students thinking towards a critical observation. In the first group, I normally ask my planned
questions with not as much enthusiasm from students as I would like. Often though, a student
will make an observation or connection that is useful for me to use with the later groups. In the
third and fourth groups, when I use these connections the student will often tell me other
observations and connections that show that the students have really grasped the concept.
Overall, I am pleasantly surprised with the results I am seeing with the students and look forward
to seeing how things will go next week when Mrs. Karr is not in the classroom with me for the
week.