Pesavento Student Teaching

Week 6 in the books! This week, I did my edTPA lessons and my college supervisor came to observe me! Talk about a stressful week :( My brain is in overdrive making connections between my lesson plans and edTPA rubric demands. To be honest, I'm feeling overwhelmed and very stressed. My daughter looked at me the other day and said, "I miss Mommy." I just about drowned the world in my tears. I'm overwhelmed, I'm stressed, I'm exhausted, and I miss spending time with my kids! I'm so busy writing lesson plans, grading, doing homework, stressing about the edTPA, and creating materials for lessons, that I have zero free time. I'm really feeling the weight of this undertaking this week. I've had to tell myself "One day at a time" at least 50 times this week. Aside from that, we had a half day on Friday and did not switch classes on Wednesday due to an assembly and Mustang Celebration. This week we finished up the unit on the Early Americans. I ...

Week 5 in the books! This week, we continued our first unit on the Early Americans. My cooperating teacher left the room for all of my blocks...it was kind of awesome! It really felt like my own classroom.  On Monday, the students finished their MAP testing, so we continued on Tuesday with Early American Government and Economy. To me, this is the driest segment of the unit, so I tried to make it fun for the students. My students sit at tables of 4, so I had the tables choose a leader. They all had to agree, and the chosen leader had to stand up. Then I posed a question: Should we eat pizza every day for lunch? The students immediately started laughing and shouting YES!!! However, I had post it notes that I handed out to each person. They had different sayings on them. One said " Your grandma gags every time she eats cheese." Another said "Your mom is allergic to gluten." Another said " Your brother is lactose intolerant". Other notes had something silly a...

Week four in the books! I cannot believe I am 1/4 of the way through student teaching.      This week was a little different for me. I taught all three 60 minute social studies blocks on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I tackled Lesson 1 in Chapter 1 on "The First Americans". I created lessons that covered how the early Americans came here, where and how they migrated, ancient tribes and how they utilized the natural resources available to them to survive and thrive. Creating engaging lessons and connecting them to prior learning is becoming easier for me to do. As I have mentioned in prior posts, it is easier and much more clear to see the big picture when there are actual students in front of you and one does not have to create a hypothetical classroom, like we did during lessons in prior classes. With that it mind, I realized this week that my focus needs to shift slightly from lessons and lesson planning ( not in any way meaning that I should put lesson planning asi...

Week 3 in the books! This was my first full week of teaching all three social studies blocks! I CANNOT believe how much I learn every single day.From behavior management to tiny details that I realize can enhance the engagement and performance of my students, I am learning in spades every day. This week, the most important lesson I learned is that I absolutely love teaching. I understand that may be a strange statement considering I've been preparing for this for the last 18 months or so. However, it is different learning theory and strategies than actually BEING in the classroom and experiencing teaching and learning with and from your students. A person might love the thought of being a teacher in theory, but realize the passion isn't there when presented with a classroom of wild and energetic 5th graders. I love this. I'm all in. This is definitely where I am meant to be. There are two lessons from this week that I think warrant discussion. First was Thursday. This l...

Wow, this is going by extremely quickly! We're already finished with Week 2! The beginning of the week was used to fulfill benchmarks in geography, science, and writing. However, Thursday and Friday I was able to teach my first two lessons to all three social studies blocks! My cooperating teacher was really helpful in giving me feedback and tips while I was planning these lessons.  For Thursday, I created a "geography skills lab". We spent a lot of time the beginning of this school year pre-assessing their geography knowledge and skills. I thought it would be a good idea to do some hands on activities that would simultaneously show my cooperating teacher and I what they know while making the lesson more engaging than the paper assessments we have been doing to this point. I originally created four centers: 1.)  An interactive map on the Smart Board that required the kids to drag the continent or ocean to the correct place on the map 2.) A latitude and longitude works...