My First Week in Full Control

Monday, November 12th: My first day in full control over the classroom! I am so excited and have had such a wonderful week! I took control on Monday and I am feeling very confident and happy!
Monday started off with a bang. I had the students right away to myself in the morning; it was a little hectic simply because this was the first day that I was in the room and Rebecca was not. The kids were a little crazy about not having Miss May in the room, but I kept them under control and was able to answer all of their questions and control the behavior as well. It went very well. We had Weekend News, Library, Fitness, and Writing all in the morning. During the middle block, Miss May came in and worked with our two lowest students in Maths. She took those two out of the room to work, and I was in control of the rest of the class. Maths time is difficult because there is a lot of work to be done, but the class is also separated into three different groups. Therefore I have one group on the mat with me being taught and the other two groups are responsible for getting their work done independently. The difference with having various reading groups and various maths groups is that during reading the students are all able to read silently, whereas during maths a lot of times they have questions. I have put the rule “3 Before Me” into place; the students are to ask 3 other students from their group before they come ask me. This has helped alleviate me being interrupted when trying to teach the group on the mat, but it inevitably creates more noise around the room. Monday afternoon was by far the most exciting! Our tires and soil arrived for our Veggie Garden! We split the class into various jobs, some rolling tires, some shoveling dirt, others manning the buckets, some being photographers, etc. All of us went out and worked together to move the tires to be right outside our classroom door as well as move the dirt to fill into each tire. Everyone worked very hard and we all worked so well together. We have heaps of pictures to be put into a photo story and there were a lot of red faces from working so hard moving everything around. I am very pleased with my students!
Tuesday we began our vegetable inquiry learning. I split the class into seven groups of four students each. We also rearranged the classroom to have seven groups of four desks, and each group came up with their own group name. The groups will each be responsible for a different topic of study dealing with plants. The groups then work together to research and present their information to the class.

The Carrots
Plant Defenses
The Fruit Salad
Why Plants are Green
The Dancing Bananas
What Plants Grow in Different Seasons
The Red Ripe Radishes
Edible and Non-edible Plants
The Gnomes
How Plants Grow and Biggest Plants
The Gherkins
How Animals Effect Plants
The Dancing, Jumping Peas
Plant Life Cycles

The students got together and began planning out and discussing their various topics. In fact these topics above were not all assigned by me, I laid out seven topics that I had thought of and assigned them to the class but also gave them the option that if they could agree upon a different topic they could propose it to me and switch. I believe three groups came up with and switched their topics to ones they wondered about themselves. I am very excited to see what the students are able to come up with and how they work together.
Wednesday was a quite fun day as well. We began writing poems about summer using onomatopoeia. The students in Room 28 are amazing poem writers! We brainstormed together various words to use for onomatopoeia and also came up with different topics about summer they could include in their poems. When they set off to work I was so impressed, if I had closed my eyes I would not even have known they were in the room! Each one of them set out and began working diligently on their poems, there was not a sound to be heard other than pencils against the paper. They have since edited and begun to create their final copies of their poems to put on posters with illustrations. I am loving their poetry work! During the middle block today, Mr. Holt, the deputy principal, came in to observe. Rebecca left the room and left me in charge. I was all set! That morning I had laid out everything I would need for Maths and Handwriting. We had all brand new Maths group books with all the information sheets set inside, everything was laid out properly, and I’d double checked to make sure we had enough supplies to get through our lessons. I safely put all these supplies and information under my chair in front of the room. It should have gone perfectly. Well of course, it didn’t. Rebecca had kindly decided to tidy up the room before leaving me to teach. She tidied up all the papers on the floor and organized everything in the room. She did a very good job; I couldn’t find a thing! So here I am with Mr. Holt observing and I’m running around trying to find everything I need for the lesson. I couldn’t find one thing! So finally I threw up my hands and laughed. I told the kids things were missing and we’d just have to wing it. So I organized the Maths groups and sent them off to work. Everything went pretty smoothly, until I got to handwriting. The poems I had printed off to have the students copy and illustrate had also been tidied up by Rebecca. The kids and I had a good laugh about it again and I said, well I guess we’ll just have to read a story instead. So we all gathered on the mat and I read aloud to the students instead. In the end everything really did go pretty well, but all I could think was why did this have to happen on the day when Mr. Holt was in the room! Haha
Thursday and Friday were tough days. They were both rainy days so the kids were inside for most of the day. Having a bunch of 10-11year olds inside all day long is hard. They all have loads of energy and we don’t have a gym for them to run around in. Behaviors were up and it was difficult to focus, but I was able to keep control of the room. I am happy that the students are realizing that I am here to teach and my rules will be the same as Rebecca’s have been. With only 5 weeks left in the Term I found there was no point in me trying to implement my own rules. Instead I just picked up the rules that Rebecca has been using and have kept them all the exact same. Its far easier for the students and for me.
I am very happy with the classroom and enjoying the class better now that I have learned strategies for keeping control over the behaviors. We are able to joke around and do lots of activities, especially with our Veggie Garden! The kids are taking a lot of interest in our garden so cross your fingers that all goes well!
Next week I will be in the room by myself for almost all of the day rather than just in blocks, so wish me luck! I’m loving it!