Literacy Lesson

 Alexandra Slater 

Thursday, December 2nd 

    Today we had a sub. My MT emailed me the day prior letting me know she was not going to be in class. She asked if I could help out the sub with the technology and daily schedule. She also encouraged me to jump in as much as possible. I did the morning opening lesson, yellow book, foundations, and my literacy lesson. So I would say I taught 50% of the day. The kids seemed to be a little crazy since we had a sub. Between the sub and I we had to clip down 5 students. We had two students on orange and 3 on yellow by the end of the day. Besides, the behavior issues it was a decent day. We got a lot of work done even though Mrs. Sikora was not here. I taught my first literacy lesson and it went pretty well besides the students being very hyper after lunch. I read them a story that used a lot of mental image for my anticipatory set and they all loved it. They were super engaged and were excited to answer my questions after. Im glad my topic for the literacy lesson was mental images because Dr. Kelly taught us great beneficial information on the topic a few weeks back. After the AS we reread our story of the week and i included mental images in it. We also took a look at an anchor chart that provided us with mental image types. The types included using our 5 senses while creating mental image. From there on we did a mystery box activity using our 5 senses. The students absolutely loved it! They did get a little wound up during it and i did the best i could to try and calm them back down and focus for the remaining of the lesson. The remaining part of the day they had gym and then spent the rest on their chrome books.  It was nice working with a sub because the more i work with different people the more i get to know the staff here. Its good to make connections and relationships with other staff / teachers. The sub was actually the reading specialist teacher here so it was nice talking with her about her experience here at Monee Elementary. She also told me about her college experience and student teaching experience. The only downfall to having a sub today was that I didn't get to get my teacher mentors feedback at the end of the day. After every lesson I teach I always stay late talking to my teacher mentor about how I did on my lesson and getting advice for the next one. Next week is my last lesson though wooo! I can't believe this experience is already over! It flew by....   Good luck to everyone on their last week in the classrooms and the upcoming tests! :)