week 15 weekly reflection dec. 17-21

Break!  Thank goodness.  Lost a kid during my field trip yesterday.  Never take a huge group of students to a museum the day before Winter break.  Why?  EVERY single school in the city has the exact same idea.  I'm taking the next week and a half off of reflecting and am just going to try to get my excitement back.  Oh yeah and I have to plan what we're going to do when we get back...

week 14 weekly reflection dec. 10-14

So one of the things that I've been working on so much with the students is finding the main idea.  They're getting so much better!  This week I had them try to read an article that they've never seen before from timeforkids.com and they did great!  Majority of them were able to identify the main idea and supporting details.  I really was proud and realize that a lot of the hard work I've put in has helped!! 

Another great thing about this week made me realize something.  As we finish up our novel studies just in time for winter break my highest group got to the best part of their novel.  I love the novel they're reading-Among the Hidden-and I was so excited for them to get to the part to see how they reacted.  My excitement made me realize something-I haven't really shown them my excitement yet this year.  I've been so focused on being the disciplinarian and making sure I have little to no behavior problems in my class that I forgot that the reason many of them liked me in third grade was because I was so excited.  And quite frankly, I liked that better.  When I was so excited.  It made me think that I must be excited and pass that excitement down.  I have been excited this year, I just haven't really shown it.  I was afarid to let me guard down.  I realize now that when I'm excited they become excited and that doesn't necessarily mean that things are going to go haywire.  I'm beginning to plan the next unit we'll do after break and I'm thinking of how can I get them to be excited???  How can I be excited???  I know I want to teach nonfiction but I want it to be about a topic I'm excited about so that I can pass it on to them...