Today I mainly ran the classroom on my own. Mrs. Palmer was out sick and had a sub step in for her. For the most part, the sub just hung out and helped with some classroom management here and there. The students had an amazing start to the day! They all got on task quickly and were quiet the whole 15 minutes during independent work time (something they usually struggle with). For math, the students are learning that the plastic coins we use are not to be played with, and we hardly had issues with misuse of them. I was teaching the students how to put coins in order from greatest value to least value, and every student seemed to catch on!
During snack Mrs. Palmer usually reads a book to them, so today that was my job. I don't think I did quite as good of a job as she does at articulating and making it sound interesting, but the students still listened and laughed at funny parts! After specials the students were working on math worksheets with counting money and addition/subtraction coloring sheets. The students absolutely love those coloring sheets! To end the day, we had science with the insects. I had the students sit in a circle in the back and pass around the Painted Lady Larvae. Since we only got 6 of them in the container, we had a class observation. As the students were passing the container around, I had each student say an observation. This worked really well and each student got to see them up close!
Overall, I felt very confident throughout the day. There were many times where I thought, "yea, I could do this!" Being independent in the classroom definitely made me learn a lot and I really had to enforce the classroom management techniques the students are used to. I was never overwhelmed with anything or with the students today. Yay!
Interesting event of the day: one of my students lost a tooth! She came into the room with it in her hand and held it up to my face. First of all, gross! Second of all, at least she wont be wiggling it back and forth all day anymore!