Teaching Well

Its the end of the year. I still want to teach well.

I have so many emotions. I go from excited to bummed in a matter of minutes. I go from pumped to scared literally at any points of the day. I love my students and the music classes I get to teach... and then I realize I get to teach 2nd grade only next year.

And I have mixed feelings about that! Not because of the stress or the pull of wanting to do it all well, but because I am sad about leaving all of the precious little ones that shape my life and my teaching.

We have had a busy week for only 3 days. It's been a GREAT few days though! I have been doing a Daily 5 and CAFE webinar and WOW! We did prediction and main idea with supporting details. CAFE lays everything out with a book for the teacher so this has been an amazing resource.

I texted people Tuesday and said I was so sad no one came to watch that class because it was excellent! We start on the floor and sang our Main Idea song to the tune of "NO". I wrote an emoji post a few weeks ago that include this song so my class was so excited about singing about it!
{Check it out at Emoji English }

Anyway, Daily 5. We read the book Stephanie's Ponytail.

Which because they call me by my first name, I had them hooked. They even said "Your hair is always in a ponytail!!" We talked about main ideas and how a main idea is what the story is about. Then we asked the question "If this event is taken out of the story, would the story continue and be okay? Or would the story change? If it changes than we have found a supporting detail!" I read the story aloud and then we did a quick turn and talk about what we thought the main idea was and how we knew. It was EXCELLENT.

We then went back to our desk to work on main ideas and supporting details in our chapter book Freckly Juice. But that quick lesson and strategy was the BEST lesson I have done so far.

I still have 7.5 days left at school and a mountain of paperwork to do!

Happy Almost Summertime,
Stephanie