September 3, 2009

another frustration and a little crying at my desk

Today afterschool (after a wonderful surprise end-of-the-day visit from my good friend's mom who works in the district!! ), I met with my literacy coach to determine a plan of action for tackling my whirlwind of literacy that will take place next week (by next week, I mean the two days I will actually be with my kids...). Thankfully, she is going to come into my room and lead two of my guided reading groups. Phew. Thanks, Mrs. J! However, we still are determining what I need to start doing in the future for guided reading.

Mrs. J conferenced with the other literacy coaches today, and they decided that me, my other novice teacher buddy Miss R (not to be confused with the other Miss R from IWU!), and my team partner, Ms. R (too many Rs...), who are all confused about literacy this year, will be doing Daily 5. Or make that Daily 3. (I'm not sure which 2 they ditched, but I'll find out I guess). However, we'll be doing Daily 3 with a twist: instead of just reading to self, etc. all week, students will first be required to complete reading assignments in their leveled readers before and after our guided reading group sessions. After working with the reader, they will move onto the Daily 3. I am not exactly sure what I'm going to be doing for this since I am not entirely familiar with the ins and outs of the Daily 5 (just that it seems to be very "in" right now...), but I'm assuming that we are all going to work this out together.

I feel like Daily 5 is something I can handle (or will be able to handle with some help). It will be a lot of work to figure out at first, and tough to train my chatty bunch of kiddos, but at least someone is FINALLY giving me some direction on what to do here. Thank goodenss.

Anyways, that was a big long tangent. Back to the crying. Well, after this meeting, I began working on some plans and I decided I should probably look over the Literacy Test I am giving tomorrow. (I know, I'm a bad teacher. I should have looked at it at the BEGINNING of the week, not Thursday night! *hangs head in shame*) Well, imagine my surprise when, after my careful adhearence to the teacher edition lesson guides, my focus on teaching all of the "tested skills," and my emphasis on the week's target reading strategy, the extended essay question on the reading test is entirely based on a skill that appeared NOWHERE in the story or target skills. what the heck? I would have taught my students the skill if the text had asked me to! Why are they testing my kids on it???

Well, I called my team partner Ms. R and left her a very freaked out voicemail, then proceeded to cry for about 15 minutes. Thank goodness she called me back (after I had stopped being a baby) and calmed me down. Tomorrow's test will be fine, and I will talk them through that portion. And, as I was reminded today, I am the teacher now. If I don't like a part of a test, I can throw it out this week. Or, I can even do it with them.

I am the teacher. When did that happen?

Yikes.

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