The end of the term is near

          Wednesday...Wednesday was rough. I can't share details, and even if I could there would just be too much to go over! To put it quite frankly, yesterday chewed me up and spit me out. Thank goodness for my besties and my boyfriend. I don't think I could survived yesterday without their support. Also, my MAT cohort is amazingly supportive. It's true that they are the only ones who are really aware of what you're going through because they are going through it as well. I'm a lucky girl to have so much support in my life.
          I'm thinking that what happened yesterday was just magnified by all of the stress that I was already under. The end of the term is next Friday! I have presentations, papers, lesson plans, and the like due on various days between now and then. Oh, I also have to take my Civil Rights Exam on Saturday. It's something I have to pass in order to be licensed, so it is important. I just wish it didn't cost so much money.
          On a more positive note, I'm still loving every minute with my 5th graders. They make me so happy. No matter how tired or stressed I am, I adore spending time with them. We started working on fractions this morning, I did have a bit of a minor mishap though. There was a part of the lesson that I accidentally skipped a key part of the lesson. There was a warm up section in the beginning that involved cubes, and how to divide it into pieces that create fractions. I have no idea how I missed that! I reviewed the lesson for a while before the kids got to class, and I thought I had been really thorough when I was reading. This is something I'm going to have to fix immediately, I can already tell you that I'll be reading every little piece of the lesson even more carefully. However, I am proud to report that I got everything done in my desired time frame! Yay! That's definitely been one of my struggles. Now I just need to consistently achieve my desired time frame. At least through all of this stress, I can tell that I'm improving my teaching.
          My students were quite naughty when I went to pick them up from PE yesterday. They were talking in line. Several boys thought I couldn't see them once they rounded a corner, so they began running and one of my students fell. After checking to see if my student wasn't hurt, I explained that this was a reason why we only walk in the hallways. One of my boy students got some spiderwebs or fuzz onto his shoe, and the whole class lost it. It was the most ridiculous hallway trips I have ever had with them. After multiple warnings, I took away $10 Duck Bucks from each student. I really hate taking away money from them, but it is truly effective.
         Immediately after taking collecting the money, we went into our reading lesson. This was the first reading lesson that I got to teach. I usually do the vocabulary lessons from the story they will read on Tuesdays, and then my mentor teacher reads the story with them on Wednesday when I am not there. Too many of the students needed to finish their unit math tests that they started Wednesday morning, so my mentor teacher had them finish their tests instead of starting the reading lesson. Our goal for the reading lesson was to identify important events in the story. I read the story out loud for the students, and we would stop every few pages to write down the important event from the 2-3 pages we had just read. Something my mentor teacher said she should have told me was to let the kids discuss the important events with their desk partner before discussing it and writing the event as a class. After the first event she cut in and told the class to discuss with a partner first. This worked well, and I can see why she does it in every reading lesson. Overall, the lesson went pretty well and the kids were much better behaved.
       
         Something I almost that I almost forgot to tell you were several  reasons why I love my students.

1. They HATE when I'm gone. Last week I went to a preschool for one of my classes, and my students were so very disappointed that I was gone. When I came back on Tuesday they had so many things to tell me! 
2. They like the silly things I do. I have been slacking on writing my personal trivia on the whiteboard, and yesterday they begged me to start doing it again. I love doing trivia, but I'm going to have to get super creative if I'm going to be able to do trivia all year!
3. They actually like me. Even though I had to take money away from them only an hour before the end of the day, when they were ready to be dismissed they all wanted to talk to me and tell me things. As we were walking out of the classroom, one of my girl students hooked her arm around mine and said, "Come on Ms. Preston, you're coming home with me! You're not allowed to go anywhere else." Definitely made me feel loved. I adore these kiddos.

         Even though I have been beyond busy, I was able to put up our tiny, fake Christmas tree. It's so adorable! I even found a tiny tree skirt at Target that was the perfect size. Someday we'll have a house and we can get a real tree, but this will work for now. Isn't it cute?!

Christmas Tree 2012
Do you like the bottle of sparkling cider in the background?
What can I say, I love Martinelli's!

        I was really hoping to have my little sister take some pictures of my boyfriend and I for some Christmas cards, but I'm just not sure if that will happen at this point. She's been taking a photography class at Lewis and Clark College, and she's been getting quite good. Look at this wonderful picture she took of our dad. It seems to sum him up quite well.

Photo credit to Kaylin M. Preston

          Only one week until the term is done, and there is still so much to do. It's hard to believe that grad school will be over in only a few months, it's been such a crazy ride already. Mid-January is fast approaching, and I'm looking forward to it because that's when I will get to be in my classroom everyday instead of just twice a week. Until then...I just need to make it through this next week. I WILL do this.