First Inservice

Well, I made it through my first inservice.  We did some prepping for the coming weeks and did grade level planning for the next two weeks.  The grading for report cards I found to be very time consuming, but also a little interesting.  Shaunna and I tended to switch roles back and forth on grading hard and easy.  We only did the behavior benchmark scores for the students because that took us all of our non planning time.  It was time consuming because she took the time to go through each student in each catagory with me.  I want to say I have never seen a report card like this but I must have when my son was in first grade before he went into optional however I don't remember anything this extensive.  It was nice that Shaunna included my thoughts and observations in the grading.  We have a plan for next quarter to get a jumpstart on the grades so we can have them completed on inservice.

I'm getting more responses back from my students parents so hopefully I will be able to wrap up my parent interviews for both the literacy and the community project here in the next week or two.  Shaunna and I discussed a parent lunch and these couple weeks are very hectic so we decided to put on a Thanksgiving Feast next month where the parents bring in a dish and we all have lunch in the classroom.  She has done these before but hasn't the last couple of years so she was very receptive when I brought up doing a luncheon with our parents.

I am going to start taking over the mornings now.  I begin reading and phonics this week.  We found an extra teacher's manual for reading so I can have one at home to practice with before I have to do it with the kids.  I am very nervous, but I am realizing the more I do it the more confident I become.  I will be doing this for 3 weeks before I take over all day on Wednesdays.  A few weeks of that and I will be begining my mini-residency.  I do find doing the classroom teaching and homework for my classes a little overwhelming.  I don't think that will change, but I am looking forward to next year when I can focus on teaching.  That will be a whole new world.