I have a lot to learn

       I guess it would be safe to stay that I came into this semester expecting to be refined as a teacher, but not fully expecting to learn anything new. Don't get me wrong, I knew that I would be seeing different teaching, management and assessment styles/methods, but I thought that I knew it all already and would never really change my mind on how these areas would be carried out in my future classroom.  It is safe to say that I was wrong in thinking this.  In just the past two days I have learned so much more about teaching than I ever thought that I could in 48 short hours! I was a person that thought I had it all together, especially because of all the classes I have had and the experience I have had in the classroom.  Now that I am thinking about it I am so glad that I did not know it all because that would make student teaching a real waste of time for me. 
      Having spent so much time in this classroom last semester, I felt that I was going to be able to come right into the classroom and take the reigns.  I felt that I did not need any prep time and that sitting at my desk for a straight week with nothing to do was going to kill me!  Now I am looking at this time as one of the biggest learning experiences that I have had, and it is only day two. 
     So what have I learned in these past days?  Well where should I start.... I have learned the purpose of doing certain activities and how to differentiate instruction within the whole class time.  I have seen simple ways that all studnets can be instructed at the level they are at, without holding back ones that are capable of higher level thinking. Something that has been really exciting for me to learn are the simple strategies that can really take a lesson to the next level for the students.  Today while in guided reading groups I was able to learn a really cool reading strategy that uses different colored straws to help the students guide their reading and show us teachers what words they know and what words they do not know.  The students would follow along in the book while they are reading alone with a green straw and the teacher would listen.  When the student would get stuck they would point to the confusing word with a red straw.  This would show the teacher that they are stuck and need some help.  We could help them sound out the word and then they would continue reading.  When trying to listen to a small group of students reading on their own it was nice to be able to see how they were doing by them using the straw and also to be able to help them right away when they got stuck instead of them sitting on a word getting frustrated with themselves.
     In just a few short days I can say that I am really learning a lot of new strategies that I will keep in my "teacher toolbox" and take with me into my own classroom someday!