First Day of Practicum

The first day of Practicum has come and gone and I am finding a great weight lifted off my shoulders. All of the anxiety of "Where will I be placed? What is it going to be like? What am I going to do or say?" is finally gone. My students and CT were both extremely welcoming and the kids were even sweeter than I could have ever imagined. There were several things that I noticed in my classroom on day one that I have filed back in my brain to use in my future classroom.

First is the website Teach Your Monster to Read, on this website children get to design their own monster and from there they embark on several different adventures with him involving activities with the beginning steps of reading. Yesterday was the first day that the children used Teach Your Monster to Read so I was able to see their initial reactions to it. Another activity that the children will be doing this week is having a "T party", since T is their letter for the week. Students will get to drink tea, eat tortilla chips, Twizzlers, and Twix to promote letter association. Another activity that struck my interest was the floating "M" science experiment. In the floating "M" experiment students place an M&M in warm water and the M floats up off of the candy. I had to leave before my CT did this activity with them, so sadly I did not get to see the students reactions. I can't wait until I have the chance to implement all of these activities in my classroom!