First official day!

Today was my first official day of student teaching! We had one 5th grade, 2 4th grade, 2 1st grade, and 1 2nd grade. I am going to go through the day by grade level.

5th Grade
The students are getting ready to sing at a cluster concert on Thursday. The students are not required to be there, however they are strongly encouraged to attend. All of the 5th graders in the district are going to be singing "When You Believe" from The Prince of Egypt. The students are also learning recorder. One interesting technique was having the students practice silently on their chin. It gave the students a chance to take a break and write in note names. He also gave them a chance to check notes and fingerings with a partner.

4th Grade (x2)
The students are beginning unit 4 in their books, which focuses on songs that have to do with emotions. The fourth graders sang a couple songs ("Happiness" from the musical You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"). Throughout the lesson, the students were asked several critical thinking questions, such as "What does a musical have?" (it's a play with music, they have costumes, sets, props, etc.) and "How is this song happy? (Rhythm, melody, words, etc.). The answers the students were able to come up with were impressive. It is important to give the students time to answer. While this may seem to interrupt the flow of class, students need time to think and express their ideas. The teacher also began a list of terms on the whiteboard for the students. The terms were subjects that came up in class that they have not necessairly discussed before such as "Musical, touring, pitch, etc." The terms were not necessairly musical terms, however they all had to do with the content of the lesson.

First Grade (x2)
It seems like movement is really key with students. There were 2 first grade classes, and each had their difficulties. In the first class, there was a student with Cerebral Palsy. It was amazing to see how well all of the students interacted with her. The students played a game that included partnering up, as well as turning in a circle with their partner, and quite a few students wanted to partner with the girl with CP, as well as being very helpful in helping the student complete the moves that went with the song. There was a full time para-pro with the student, which helped with classroom management.
In the second 1st grade class, there was a specific student who seemed to have a lot of problems. He will be having a psych evaluation soon, and my cooperating teacher expressed to me that he has run out of ideas with disciplining this student. It seems that you really have to pick your battles, especially when dealing with elementary school students. This student was disruptive, however the other students in the class have become used to this student disruptive, and are able to ignore him.

I think the most interesting thing I noticed throughout the day was how different grades required different balances of time. There has to be a variety of teacher-driven, student led interactions, student movement, and discussion. The variety of activities has to increase at younger levels, simply because the students cannot concentrate for long periods of time. You really have to keep younger students moving, as well. The more the move, the better behaved they are.

One thing I have to work on is how I phrase instructions. Instead of saying "can we?" my cooperating teacher suggested saying something such as "Lets do this," or "Please do this." This show respect for the students, but does not give them a chance to say "no, we can't do that." While this may be more evident with middle school students, this is something I will have to work on.