Teaching Observation

I had my first day of teaching observation today. I'll be going on Fridays since the rest of the week I have classes. Anyway, I must say I enjoyed it today!

I am in a grade two classroom that has 20 students. The kids were pretty well behaved, though they do like to talk - not overly and it wasn't too loud. The teacher I'm helping, Mrs. G. is an awesome teacher! She's been teaching this grade for a couple of years, and I think for four years she taught grades 4, 5, and 6. She said she'd like to go and teach kindergarten again sometime because she did her observation and teacher training in a kindergarten class and enjoyed it.

I mostly observed today, though I did help to keep the kids quiet, walked around the room and commented on pictures they were drawing, helpping a bit with some adding during math, did spelling with a couple of them (both came in after the spelling was done and the teacher wanted to continue to do her lesson so she asked me to do the spelling). I'm not supposed to teach at this point, but I'm allowed to help out in little things around the class. I am looking forward to going back again next Friday!

I'll be quite busy this weekend as I've got two unit plans due next week - one Tuesday and the other Wednesday. I've also got to do an article critique and study for a couple of little quizzes for next week as well. I think once I get over this week things will slow down some for me. My big problem lately is procrastination. I need to get out of that habit and just sit down and do the work done and over with, rather than doing little bits and pieces here and there and spending time doing other things.

Tonight I went to dinner with an old friend I went to high school with. We went to Swiss Challet and I had my usual - quarter chicken dinner with white meat and fries. It was soooo good! It's the first time I've eaten at this restaurant since I've been back in Canada. I think it's my favourite place to eat at. It was quite busy there tonight and we had to wait 20 minutes before we could get a table. It was worth it though. I LOVE their chicken!

We also stopped at the mall on the way home and while looking around I got a Christmas gift for my nephew and some baby yarn to make a cute little hat and a rabbit toy (all knitted). I'll be making these for the mitten tree at church, so hopefully I'll have time to get them done up. If not I'll make them and donate them next year. I'm supposed to make some socks for my friend's baby girl (she's about six months old), and her son (he's about two years old). They shouldn't take too long, so I should get to work on them so she can have them when they need their snow suits. She wanted them for that specific purpose - to keep their feet warm when they are wearing their snow suits.

Well, I'd better head off for now. I'm feeling quite tired tonight, and I want to watch a few episodes of season 5 of Stargate SG-1 (from my box set) before bed.

Have a Christ-filled day/night!

Busy

Hi! I hope you are all doing well. As for me, well, I've been a little busy of late. These next two will probably be my busiest so far since the beginning of the school year. This week alone, I have two presentations (one was today, the other tomorrow), an article critique, and a little quiz (today). Besides that, I start my teacher observation this Friday. Next week I have two unit plans due, an art response paper, an article critique, and two little quizes (why does that look incorrectly spelled? It looks incorrect as "quizzes" as well.) So, yeah. I'm quite busy lately.

Today we had on of the presentations, as I mentioned above. We had a group of four and we each hard parts to do. I think it went relatively well, though there were some things we messed up with, such as using fillers (umms, ahhs, etc.), needing to walk around the room a little more...things like that. We find out next week (I think) how we did, but first we have to fill out peer evaluation forms for everyone in the group, including ourselves. That deals with rating each other with regard to taking part in the planning, attending group meetings, doing our share in the presentation, etc. What we were doing for this particular presentation was one of the chapters from our text book. I'm at least glad that we have this one over and done with.

Tomorrow's presentation is on an author who holds a particular behaviourist attitude with regard to classroom management. The prof picked four or five authors and each group got assigned to one author. I don't feel well prepared for this one at all, so hopefully it will go well. It's to be 20-25 minutes in length and we have to present the author's view.

The weather is getting cooler here lately, as it is in many places since it's fall. There have been only two mornings so far that I've had to scrape some frost off the car windows, but it's not been anything major. It hasn't been too cold, and for the last few weeks it's been gorgeous weather with only a bit of rain. It was perfect weather last week to go and take some pictures in a local park with my best friend and her eight year old daughter.

My walk with the Lord is still not that great. I do find myself praying most nights - usally it ends up with me falling asleep before I'm finished, or even dozing off part way through. I don't like that and I know I should do my praying before getting into bed to prevent it from happening - but I don't. I've only read the Bible a couple of times lately, and again I know I should be doing that too. I feel such a struggle often to commune with the Lord so I think there must be some sort of spiritual battle going on. I will overcome this (with God's help of course)...I just don't know when. Maybe I need to push myself a little more and get over this hump and then I'll get back on track.

I was looking back through my blog (well, two of them anyway), and compared my posts from then and now. For this blog (the other one I was parousing was my knitting blog), I seemed to relate things more to the Bible, to God and Jesus more than I've been doing in the last while. I guess the change has mostly to do with getting away from church and praying and Bible studies, etc., from when I was in Korea...maybe even a little before that. I want to try and get my posts looking and sounding more like they used to - not that they were anything great, but I think they were at least a little more glorifying to the Lord than these ones over the last year or so. Of course, part of the reason is that I wasn't posting as much during that time either...

I've included, as you can see, a couple of pictures from my trip to the park with my best friend and her daughter. Our primary reason for going was to take pictures of the beautiful changing leaves. It never ceases to amaze me how God designed and created the trees - not all of them have leaves that change colours, and of those that do change, the colours aren't all the same. Isn't God amazing?! Such beautiful and wounderous creations!

Well, I must be off and finish my article critique and presentation for tomorrow! Have a Christ-filled day!!