The Life of a First Grade Teacher

 January 29, 2021 I have had a very busy yet productive week and therefore I am giving it a rating of 4. I accomplished several tasks this week one of which was finishing my mid year PDPs. It felt wonderful to have that off my plate. I also had PD today to learn how to use a new tool that our district has purchased to help with evaluating reading and math skills of our Tier II students. FastBridge is an assessment tool that helps to track the progress of students. I believe that this is going to be a great help and it can be done virtually one on one giving us better data. I can not wait to begin using FastBridge and as I do I'll give updates on the results. On Thursday, members of our central office visited our school to see how virtual learning was going. One of which came into my class. I had just finished with my Zoom for the day and so we had a chance to talk. She asked me my thoughts on virtual learning and how I felt last fall when we had all students back in the classroom 5...

 Friday, January 22, 2021 As I this short week of virtual teaching due to Martin Luther King holiday, I would like to give it a ranking of a 3 out of 5. It was not the best week and neither was it the worst week I have had. Just rather OK. One of the bright spots was that all of my students have their packets that they will need for continuation of virtual learning. I have our school counselor to thank for that. She, along with our school social worker, delivered packets to 2 students who's families were unable to pick them up. Another bright spot is that planning has been done through next week. It does not seem as if it should be, but lesson plans for virtual teaching is a lot more time consuming than in person lesson plans. At least that is how I feel. This week has felt like it was longer than just four days. Although, I find that to often be the case when you have a day off.  A great accomplishment for me this week has been the fact that out of my now 14 students, I am ha...

 Friday, January 15, 2021 As this week draws to an end, I would like to give it a rating of 2 1/2. This really pains me after coming off such a great week. There are several things that contributed to this rating. On Monday evening, our school board voted to extend virtual learning until February 16. This threw us into a frenzy creating packets to make sure that our students had materials and supplies needed for another four weeks of virtual learning. On top of getting packets together, I had report cards to finish and virtual lessons to teach starting at 8:30 and running until 2:15 with a 30 minute break at 9:30 (specials time) and 30 minutes at 1:00 for my lunch. All this and we have to be out of the building by 4:00 each day so they can fog. This exhausts me just typing it. Then to top it off, I found out Thursday afternoon that I am losing one of my students. This is a student who has shown such great progress since the beginning of the year. It breaks my heart thinking about i...

  Lori Murray EDU 451 Week of Reflection - January 8, 2021 Rate and explain your overall experience of the week: 1 - Very difficult to 5 - Great week I would rate this week as a 4. This was the first week back after winter break and the first time all students and staff have been totally virtual at the same time since the spring semester. It was also a 4 day week. It was great to see all of them after the break and without masks. I would have given the week a 5 if not for some glitches with technology. Respond to these questions to end your week: Observe: What pleasant surprises/accomplishments did I achieve this week? My major accomplishment that I achieved this week was navigating Zoom. I was able to share screens and videos with few hiccups. During the live Zooms, I kept an average of 10 first graders engaged. Reflect: What lessons did my work/experiences teach me that I will build upon next week? This week we started a new unit in Social Studies on maps. Next week, I plan to bu...