Tutoring and Five Senses Activity

    I am finally getting into the fun stuff of my tutoring lessons. In the beginning, I was a little worried that my tutoring student was not going to be excited about working with me and wanting to strengthen his/her reading skills. Since we have finished with all of the assessments, he is becoming more interested in what we are doing in the lessons. I start the lessons with a new reading book for us to work on, then I choose a word sort that I believe is an area that that the student needs help on. The student likes these word sorts because he/she thinks of it as playing a game. Then, we do a writing activity that relates to the new book that I introduced. At the end of each lesson, I give my tutoring student a prize ("Cars" pencil, vehicle stickers, eraser, or candy).
    Every Tuesday and Thursday, I am doing calender and SOL question time with my partnership class. I am starting to do progress reports every week now and I was able to help fill out report cards! This past week we did a fun activity with the five senses. The teacher arranged the students desks in a half circle. She had pictures of the nose, tongue, ear, hand, and eye on big posters. She provided cinnamon for them to smell. Then, she taught the students the different taste buds that are located on the tongue. She had the students to taste lemon juice, sugar, and a chip. The teacher cut the lights off and then back on and had the students to look into a partner's eyes to see how the pupils change to the light. Then, she had the students feel how a piece of banana and marshmallow feels in their mouth while closing their nose. Lastly, she had a student blindfolded and had someone go to the corner of the room and say something. The blindfolded student would guess where the noise came from. The students had a blast with this activity!

    Partnership is becoming more stressful with the work load, but one of our professors keep reminding us to take one day at a time :)

Feeling in control :)

      Last Tuesday, Mrs. Jane had a meeting to attend to and lasted until 12:15. There was a substitute available but Mrs. Jane wanted me to lead the class and let the substitute sit back and be an assistant. I started the morning off with calender time and the sol questions for the day. After the students finished the sol questions, we checked them and gave them a Hersey kiss if they got all of them correct. We met with the students that may have missed one and discussed what they did wrong. Then, we did a writing lesson on the similarities between two pets of their choice. After that, we had reading time where the students were broken up into groups according to their reading levels. My group ended up having to do a benchmark test. When they were finished, they played vowel games. After reading time was over, we came back as a class and did an activity with comparisons (-er and -est). Overall, the day went smoothly and I didn't have any behavior issues. Meeting with Mrs. Jane the day before and going over the activities that I would be doing with the students the following day, helped me feel prepared. I believe that being prepared that day helped with the positive behavioral outcomes. I felt that morning, I had control over the classroom. I believe that this helped with the positive behavior also.

   This partnership experience has been good so far! :)