September 27, 2012

         Today was a very productive day. When our students arrived one of them came up to me with an envelope addressed, in their own handwriting, to Miss. Switalski.  I opened it to read an apology about their behavior the day before. After I read the card I called the student over to thank them for apologizing. The student’s eyes began to water as they wrapped their arms around me and verbally told me how sorry they were. I was in shock and amazed. What a great way to start the day. After our morning routine we introduced math centers to our students and spent forty minutes rotating centers every twenty minutes (so, only twice today). Right now we started off by introducing our students to only four different math centers. 
          I took pictures with our classroom camera so I will make sure to post them as soon as I can. Mrs. Irvin stayed posted at center # 1 so I had to rotate between the other three centers. It was hard juggling all of the students concerns and confusion on my own, but I realized once I had one students understanding I could encourage them to help their friends at the table. This helped a ton! I am looking forward to having a parent helper during center time in the future. Once we get the students use to the idea of centers we will be encouraging parents to help out in the classroom, leading or monitoring one of the centers.

         My highlight of the day today, actually this week so far, has been hearing from several of my colleagues about our student’s progress. We have been working very hard, and spent a lot of our time these past four weeks reinforcing and continuously teaching rules, behavior, and expectations. It is awesome to hear that we are making progress and that we can slowly start to steer more, and the majority, of our attention on the curriculum. I mean lets face it, “All we ever needed to learn, we learned in Kindergarten” – unknown. Right?