During this 8 day period I have:

managed a variety of classroom routines
planned and delivered individual, small and large-group lessons, instructional and support activities related to the Teacher-Mentor’s existing instructional plans
outlined longer term plans for instructional responsibilities for the consolidation stage
begun to become familiar with and use the Teacher-Mentor’s approach to classroom management
have begun to study the Teacher-Mentor’s approach to curriculum planning

I am still working on the following goals:

creating a unit of study
using a variety of classroom and school-wide resources for teaching
confidently using classroom management techniques

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of resources at the school, and I am having to buy a lot of stuff on my own, this is to the life of the student - needless to say - a troubling thing. Why are these beacon schools so underfunded??????

I am having a lot of difficulty trying to figure out how much the students will be able to do in one day. I guess that the main problem here is that their levels are so different, I mean, there are 21 ESL students (but some of them are at a higher level than the non-ESL students), as well as 5 special Education students. I am also a little unsure as to how much I should be differentiating – do I need to make a separate lesson for every student? I will try to group the students according to weak and strong readers, and as weak and strong content students, hopefully, by providing weaker students with good models, this will alleviate some of the problems. I think that I will also make an anecdotal notes sheet for each student, that way even if they can’t write the answers, I can figure out whether or not they know what they are doing – this shouldn’t be a problem for math and science, though what about language arts??

My mentor teacher and I have not yet worked out a plan for language arts, I have started collecting resources for a unit on the frog and toad series, but we may split the class into weaker and stronger students, I will probably be getting the weaker half, and I think I am used to this, it will almost be like ESL class in Taiwan! Keep it simple.

I am getting used to the classroom management, I just feel a little strange only teaching a couple of classes every Monday and Tuesday, I think that I will be alright when I start teaching everyday. I quite like this method she has of handing out “warm and fuzzy” tickets to be drawn at the end of the week – the kids love it!