week two of the schools

First graders make me laugh. They are so honest, but only want to be honest in the most heartfelt ways. Today was a day full of some good laughs (especially because the kids were not trying to be funny). We had to have a discussion about our new president and how he can be the president of the USA if he's black. We also got to read some interesting stories like SkippyJonJones. They were great stories. I feel like the kids are starting to be more comfortable with me and I love it. There is one girl (ESL student) who will hardly ever open her mouth, but the more I try and help her, the more she opens up. She brought me a heart that she made all by herself. It's amazing how much a small piece of paper can make you smile.

I taught my first actual lesson this week and it went pretty well, to my surprise. The kids were a little routy, but it's first grade, what did I expect?? It was actually pretty enjoyable for me. I feel pretty comfortable in front of the class. I feel mostly comfortable, but still a little nervous. I assume it will take some getting used to. I think it would help if there weren't people observing me and taking notes on every move I made... oh well.

During my lesson this week, I got to use some of the great technology our school offers. I think they call it an Elmo Camera, or something like that. I talked about it a little bit in my last post but here's refresher. It's like an overhead, but way less complicated and way smaller. I put my book under this camera and followed along throught the story with the kids. All the pictures were in color, which was pretty awesome. I think it is more interesting for the kids to see the pictures in color, rather than just an overhead. I can also use this camera to zoom in, zoom out, or freeze a picture. I hope to have something like this in my own classroom, which coud be happening sooner than I thought.

This week we got to go to the computer lab, which was really nice. We don't have any computers in our classroom, so it was a great aopportunity for the kids. We actually started using them for math testing. They have a program in which the kids go through 30 problems and on each problem, they can read the problem or press a button to hear the recorded question. It's really helpful for ELL and ESL students.