Elementary Internship: Day 10

(80 hours down, 40 to go)


Happy Birthday (Observed) Dr. Seuss!! 

Today I am thankful for the mass of people that make my job easier.  As a media specialist, there is so much I have to do (run the media center, teach classes, webmaster our website, dust the American Girl dolls) and even more that I could do but don't. My predecessor set up a terrific program here at my school that invites community members in to read to students, honoring Dr. Seuss' birthday. Our family liaison was nice enough to take on the planning and arranging of this event rather than have it be one more thing included in the heavy mantle passed on to me. Thanks Deb!

Today we had members from the MN Timberwolves in, some firefighters, and various staff-members dressed up and visiting classrooms showing that reading is fun and not just for school.

Although The Man with the Yellow Hat is missing his Curious George, we're not sure where that monkey went.

It is definitely days like this that create teachable moments, and are among the days that remain in students' memories as they move on, and are pretty good for creating generalized chaos within a building.

Overall things are just crazy right now.  I am backing off of the hard core projects I had planned, because kids are just not in the right mindset. Plus I'm planning for being gone all next week for my middle school internship, so I'm having to plan this week's lesson with that in mind. My 2nd graders today were trained in on Dance Mat Typing. It's relevant, fun, and good for a class a bit hyped up by seeing The Cat in the Hat walking down the hallway.

My kindergarten class today, however, nearly mutinied when I told them we were cutting their Starfall time short in order to be read to by a member of the MN Timberwolves. I had about 5 of them scatter into dusty corners of the computer lab in protest. Nothing from my behavior bag-of-tricks worked, but luckily they settled down as soon as the story started.

This week I am administering a student survey to my 3rd and 4th graders. It is required as a part of the yearly Professional Development Plan (PDP) and it has been a huge pain in the past. I don't have pencils in the media center, and students get upset when they find out they're missing media time to do a survey.

So I made it into an online quiz with SurveyMonkey (it took forever to transfer the quiz into SurveyMonkey form, and then forever to figure out how to post it onto my webpage for easy access) and had my two 3rd & 4th  grade classes take the quiz online. It went so well! I think it was easier for them to think of the questions in context of media when they were taking it in a new form (its the same exact format they're required to take in a variety of settings, all teachers are required to give it). And I can see results so much more quickly, and convert those results into pretty tables (I'll share later this week).