Tuesday

Tuesday I was in the same district, but got to sleep almost an hour later.  I headed the same way in the morning, but turned off at the middle school corner to continue on northward to hometown-district’s northernmost school.  I checked in and headed to class.  The big difference in subbing for elementary versus middle school, besides the size of the students, is the lesson plans.  Most of the time in middle school I teach some or all lessons more than once, occasionally six times.  In elementary school however it is one class so there are a lot more plans.  Lucky me (not) I arrived on the no-specials day.  At least, no specials that gave me a break.  This was their computer lab day, so that at least was an hour I didn’t teach, but I still had to be there to help.  They learned about a website with books online, and when I say that I mean thousands of books- current and fully illustrated, in dozens of languages, accessible like a library.  Some even had audio tracks so they could listen as the stories were read to them.

Trying to remember the rest of the day- I worked in elementary again Thursday in hometown district and have fresher memories…  Ah yes, the math lesson was fun.  They had a test for half the period, and then I taught part of the next lesson.  What was fun was teaching them about standard units of measure.  We started off with a non-standard unit- how many 2nd-graders long is the room, then how many of one second-grader.  The answers were slightly different- 8 second graders, but only 7 2/3 of the one student.  I reminded them that if I chose the shortest student to measure the room, the number would have been higher and if we measured using a teacher, it would have been lower.  So then I introduced the yard by covering the last few inches of the meterstick (most metersticks have inches printed on the other side, and a meter is longer than a yard) and they estimated the the length of the room in yards before we ran out of time.

If I can recall any more good moments this day I will add them, but for the most part is was really a standard day otherwise with guided reading groups, social studies, silent reading, lunch…