:)

This past week was busy! I love it! My last day of student teaching is December 10th and it will be here in a flash. My students expressed on Friday that they wish I could stay until the end of the semester. They also said my cooperating teacher should retire and I should take over right away. Oh high schoolers :) These little guys above are the 'classroom toddler's' for the week as we cover the objective on Toddlers. My students can't decide on names for them so as of right now they are nameless :) This drawing will stay on the whiteboard for the whole objective and each day, we will add facts about toddlers to the poster paper.

The management of my 4th hour class was beginning to get a tad out of control, so I decided to try the typical 'new seats' strategy. To be honest, I was a little scared, but I kept a positive attitude and held my ground when the comments started rolling in! It took me about an hour of erasing and re-arranging my students names on a diagram in order to get the seats just right. I really wanted the new seats to benefit the students, not hurt them. The new seats have been around for about 4 school days now and I am impressed with how much the class environment has changed.  The new seats really helped the overall atmosphere and the students are more engaged and participate more in discussion. I've witnessed new seats go sour and I'm relieved that didn't happen with this new arrangement :)  After asking students to find their new seats by looking at the diagram above, I asked them to write down three reasons why they think the seats were changed.  15 out of my 16 students listed three accurate reasons. One student was very mad and wrote some harsh reasons (ooppss!) I realized that my students were aware of the issues in the classroom, and I was impressed when 15 out of 16 students were able to list them. One student wrote, "To get to know other's in the classroom."  Another student wrote, "To have new groups when we play review games." 

Overall, I'm sad to leave these students of mine.