Week #1 of student teaching

I have been so blessed with where and who I am teaching with.  The elementary school I am teaching at is a magnet school.  How a magnet school works (at least ours) is that students are admitted through a lottery.  First preference is given to siblings of students who are already enrolled, then to students who live in the school's boundaries, then in the school district, and then out of district students.  They are focused on the arts so there is a ton of art work that is integrated in to all subjects.  The hallway walls are covered with student art work and it's really good work.  Students attend a lot of specialists.  They attend an art class, music class, keyboarding/piano class, P.E., computer, and library class.  It seems like there is less time than a typical classroom to teach math, science, and reading but this is a very high performing school.  I personally think it is better for the students to be moving a lot and going to these different specialists rather than just sitting in the classroom the whole day listening to the same teacher.  I am teaching in the third grade and there are 21 students in my class.  I love the smaller class size! At this school third grade class sizes are capped at 24 students.  That seems to make a huge difference as well.  My cooperating teacher is very well organized and very willing to help me.  I think I was put with a perfect teacher. 
This week I have mostly been observing.  The schedule they have is different everyday and that will take some getting used to but my teacher has a great routine and effective procedures in place that keep the class running smoothly.  I have been writing down all the ideas I am getting from her example in a notebook and so far have some great ideas.  After I took a motivation and management class a few years ago at school I became really interested in Love and Logic.  Well it just so happens that my teacher used Love and Logic in her classroom. The basis of Love and Logic is that kids need to be given choices and then held accountable for those choices through natural consequences. 
The students in my classroom are really well behaved and fun kids.  The first day I made it a point to memorize all of their names and I successfully did so.  Our classroom has a ton of parent volunteers.  Every morning and afternoon we have a different parent who volunteers to help out with things in the classroom.  I've never seen a school with so much parent support.  The school is in a really nice area and most of the students seem to come from family with a high socio economic status so that probably has something to do with it. 
Here are some of my favorite little happenings this week:
- At the end of each day we have a classroom meeting.  At the classroom meetings students can say their favorite part of the day, something they learned that day, and give a gold star to somebody who helped them out that day.  Well my cooperating teacher was asking them what very important, big event did they need to be ready for on Monday.  One little boy raised his hand and said "Mrs. Giles is going to start teaching!"  My teacher and I laughed and she told him that yes, that was very important but what she was referring to was their ISAT testing.
- One of the boys T in my class just had a new baby brother this past week and has been having behavior problems.  He was at the back of the line with his head down, frowning, shuffling his feet and I asked him what was wrong.  He told me that nobody at the school liked him.  Then he told me "You better get used to people saying mean things to me around here!"  I asked him "Like what?" and he replied "Like shut up!" I let him know that that wouldn't be happening while I was around.  It was just kind of funny cause I thought he'd say the kids were saying a lot meaner things but nope apparently to a third grade shut up is a really mean thing.
- The kids had dance tryouts for the program they will be performing in June.  It was so fun seeing them waltz together.  One little girl S who is super out going was dancing with a little boy and he dropped his hand from off her back while the teacher was giving instructions.  She immediatley grabbed his hand and put it right back on her back for him. 
-When my cooperating teacher was about to announce who made the dance tryouts.  Little H who has been in dance since she was like two years old sat up really straight in her chair and got this smug little smile on her face and crossed her fingers and her arms.  Her smile was priceless when her name was announced.  Her best friend K didn't make it and this made her sad.  K was going to stay after for puppet tryouts during lunch recess but when she found out H couldn't stay because she had already made it for dance she decided she wouldn't try out for puppets anymore cause she wanted to play with H at recess. It makes me laugh because I remember that friends were so important at that age and I totally would have done the same thing.
- One little girl C is so quiet and sweet.  I noticed during free time she was writing something and I asked her what it was.  It was a classroom newspaper with things like lost and found, bad news, announcements, and games!

I was so impressed and asked her where she got the idea.  Apparently it was from a book she read.  Some other kids came over to look and they were so excited and wanted her to make copies for all of them. Then they all decided they wanted to make a class paper and assigned different roles like "comic artist".
- The students at this age are really in to little knick knack things.  The boys all trade these little erasers that come in weird shapes like hamburgers and pop cans.

  The girls really like these sheets of paper that have the outline of a girl traced on them (it looks like a Bratz doll) and then they stencil in the features like the hair and eyebrows.

I totally remember loving little things like that too. I think pogs were the cool thing back then.
So far student teaching is going extremely well.  This next week I am teaching all the reading, cursive, and spelling lessons. It will probably get a lot busier, as my online class also beings this week.