My first two weeks so far have been nothing but wonderful. I was expecting something completely different then what I have been experiencing thus far. My CT has been mentoring us in such a great way that when I leave every day, I feel more excited about my career choice in teaching. There are 15 students in the class and all of them come from different backgrounds. The school has many low-income families that are technically in poverty; yet the Kindergarteners never show anything but how excited they are to be at school. I was surprised at how well behaved this class is considering my last experience at this school. Last week Elizabeth and I did our first read aloud together. Our CT has a co-teacher in the mornings who help with intervention during the read aloud time so they almost always do their read alouds together. It went really well and the kids loved it (we read about a life cycle of a butterfly and then watched a fast video on it as well which they found very fascinating). From Day 1, our CT has had us working with groups of students during ABC centers. This is where our CT does guided reading, we do some sort of activity (we choose our own activity from a bin our CT set aside for us to give us options), and our CT's co-teacher (for intervention) does a worksheet with her group because this is her "one-on-one" intervention time. It fun to see the different levels that Kindergarteners are at already in November. I'm excited to see what the next few weeks bring!
Sounds like you are having a blast after your first two weeks in the classroom. I have had the opportunity to participate in some of the same activities as you. When you talk about ABC Centers we have pretty much the same thing except we call it out Reader's Workshops. I love having the opportunity to work with so many students from different backgrounds it helps us to learn how to deal with different situations in different ways and gives us more of a diverse perspective to having many different backgrounds in our future classrooms. My teacher as well has had us doing small groups with our students except they already have the stations planned out for is. Its pretty cool that you get the opportunity to pick the activities that you get to do in your small groups with your students. I hope everything continues to go well in your classroom and you keep enjoying it as much as I am in my classroom.
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