Solo week and play-dough

This week is my first solo week in kindergarten.  Yesterday was awesome and I was really looking forward to today.  I was up late last night making play-dough for a fun project around the Monsters Love Colors book.  I thought the kids would love it.  Unfortunately today did not go as well.  I think they were going easy on me yesterday and today they decided to test every single limit.  Every. Single. One!  Sigh.  So my play-dough is now sitting on the counter at school, next to the book and a big bag of googly eyes.  Maybe we'll get to it tomorrow.  Or maybe we'll have  snow day tomorrow.  You just never know with kindergarten in March.

In all fairness, the students did test every limit but I, being over tired from staying up late to make play-dough, did not respond as well as I should have.  There's always a lesson to learn.  I'm off to bed now so tomorrow WILL be a better day!

Solo week, coming right up

My solo week is coming up right after Thanksgiving vacation. What this means is that I'll be the primary teacher in the room for the entire week. My mentor teacher won't be around at all. I also have to do all of the lesson planning for the entire week, from morning meeting to end of day grading and everything in between.

I'm feeling pretty mixed about this. I have a fun project for the writing class and I'm excited about that. However, my mentor teacher and adviser keep asking me things like "what are the students going to learn on this day," and "what is your objective for that day," and I just want to have fun. Sigh. I guess fun isn't the primary goal of teaching.

As excited as I am for the writing class, I'm a little less confident in the rest of my lessons. I have them, loosely, but they still need work. Work that will have to be done over Thanksgiving vacation, while travelling.

I'm also mixed because I get excited when I finally firm up lesson plans, but then things never go as planned. A fact of life, I know. Five days is a long time to be "on" full-time. One misstep or off day and I'll have lost that class for the rest of the week. No pressure.

Plus I'll be observed and recorded off an on throughout the week. Then I have a mid-year assessment due the following week, based on the lessons from my solo week. Lessons that aren't yet finalized and apparently don't have any "hooks" or student learning in them.

I have to just keep reminding myself that I knew this would be a tough year. This will be a tough year, but time goes by. Whether you're ready for it or not. Time goes by. I have less than four weeks left in 5th grade!