First days at Patterson Rd Elementary School

Picked up my new computer from the tech department the next day. They told me that it would automatically connect to the internet.

First Day

Got there at 7:30am. Recognzing that it was Mamamama's birthday.

I spent a good portion of my 45 minutes before classes arrived trying to figure out the internet situation because it wasn't working.

Katherine told me the password to log on to the internet at Patterson Rd Elementary.

Then, with five minutes to spare, I connected to the TV in my room.

It was a minumum day, so  I was expecting 5th/6th grade and 3rd/4th grade.

The way they have things set up is two teachers from the grade level sends half of their students and we have two 30 minute periods of the same grade level.

So I had two 5th/6th grade classes.

The two were starkly different in that I didn't have a good plan for how I was going to maintain control and discipline in the first class. I learned from the first class that I need to be on them from the very beginning, including not letting the class just enter into the classroom willy nilly. Something that I learned which I incorporated the 2nd day is that I wanted desks and chairs to be put up and in the back of the classroom, so that students didn't have an inkling to go back there and play with them or hide behind them, etc.

The first class I had taught me a lot of things because it was just chaotic.

I wanted to do "Jump In, Jump Out" But I found out that with the Fifth and Sixth graders that none of them really wanted to do this activity. I had trouble with both days's of 5th/6th grade classes doing it. Some of them, I realized that we wouldn't probably have enough time to do everyone. And for some of them, including Ben's class, they had to sit down and do  it, and there was no singing or jumping involved. 

The first class's behavior was just so out of control, and it's because I didn't set expectation from the beginning.

I decided to have the rest of the classes stand outside my classroom until the whole class was there in attendance, because, compared to Dusty's school, the teachers just send them to music without supervision.

Tbh, first class was kinda chaotic, but second class I kinda got my bearings. 3rd class was great. 4th class so so. And I had a surprise TK class that I handled like a boss.

I wasn't expecting that TK class, so I spent 4 or 5 minutes just figuring out with the sub why they were there. But like I said, even though I wasn't expecting them, I handled my time with them like a boss.

Then it was time for me to go to PLC (Professional Learning Community). I met the teachers that work in my district and  they gave me some advice and different things that we could do.

My next day I was more prepared to take on a full load of students, instead of the 3 different grades.

And my second day went a whole lot better than my first.

I was clear in my expectations of the students standing outside the classroom. I gave clear instruction (for the most part) about what I wanted from them and what we would be doing as the day progressed.

I also made some changes to how I was doing stuff: including,

I changed the video from one they would consider old to one they would consider to be cooler, same instrument, the theremin, but a much cooler flight of the bumblebee one instead of the Clara Rockmore "The Swan."

I also changed the comic to not be so long. My comic was about Schroeder being excited to play a grand piano, but then deciding to play his little piano instead of the grand in front of the grand piano. I changed it to Schroeder palaying the piano and music notes falling off the staff and custodian Snoopy sweeping them up into a pile.