Lights, Camera, Action

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays you will no longer find me on campus, you can find me in my classroom at the back, kidney shaped table, teaching and working with various groups of students.  My CE is beginning to expose me to more and more responsibilities in and out of the classroom that come along with the profession of teaching.  I was really excited when I got to observe the TRC testing of some of my students!  My CE also asked me to sign their agendas and help them pack up at the end of the day, so I was able to practice that routine with them as well.  This past week I was able to stay my first full day and eat with the kids, they loved me sitting down with them and having normal conversation.  All of them were asking me questions and telling me stories all at once, and I barely could hear myself think, but that was the best lunch break I ever had!  This week I started to record my lessons, or at least attempt to, and the students were infatuated with the iPad setup.  I had to warn them to be on their best behavior because if they caused me to get a bad grade, I was not going to be happy with them.  They took it serious, and like my CE always says, she loves third grade because you can be direct with them and they understand.  My third graders knew my expectations for while I was recording, and we had no problems... at least for day 1!

I found another article on Edutopia.org that was about letting students take brain breaks and doing focused attention practices.  This first caught my attention because my CE does brain breaks quite often in her class.  However, some of their ideas for these activities and techniques did not line up to what I have been seeing in my classroom, so I decided to read further into it.  During my experience, I got to do a read aloud with my students, but in the article, it was more of student lead activities.  I am just going to tell you my top two brain break activities from the article, which were: Squiggle Story and Opposite Sides.  Squiggle Story is where one person, or the teacher draws a squiggle line, and then the student has one minute to draw with their opposite hand and complete a figure or picture out of the squiggly line.  Opposite sides is a movement activity where the students, for an example, will blink their right eye, while snapping their left hand.  These are just fun, relaxer activities to break up the routine when needed sometimes.  The second half of the article talked about focused-attention practices and how to calm the students before instruction.  These activities will allow students to disregard any thoughts that may be causing them distraction.  My favorite two from this list of suggestions was: Colors and Sound.  The colors activity is a breathing activity where the students breathe in a brighter color, such as green and breathe out a duller color like a darker gray.  The other activity, sound is calming music that is supposed to help one focus and stimulate the brain.  As a matter of fact, I am listening to a piece while I write this blog post.

If you would like to check out some of these different activities to boost your students' interest in your classroom, or calm them before your instruction click here.

Here is the sound piece that I listened to while writing this blog post https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYG0a7NOW_E

This blog post correlated with NCTCS number four.  The teacher is responsible for facilitating learning by allowing the students to complete activities that engage the students and expand their thinking skills.