She's new here

I got to meet my student teacher today, we'll call her Miss M for all blogging purposes.  She came in to meet me, check out the school, and help out in the classroom.  I felt bad giving her somewhat "dull" tasks, but those were the things that have to be done before school starts!  We sorted Base Ten blocks, put up bulletin board letters, moved textbooks and workbooks around, and walked around chatting with other teachers.  Have I mentioned how much I talk to the people I work with?  It's a lot.  Maybe excessive.  I don't know how I get my job done on some days.

I saw that {The Polished Teacher} had a link up for our own student teaching memories.  I loved my student teaching and had great experiences in both schools and grade levels.  I'm so glad my university forced me to do a second intermediate level grade student teaching- I fought it like crazy, but they told me I had to!  I probably wouldn't be teaching 4th grade right now if they didn't.  Here's the peak and pit of my semester experience:

Ask too many questions.  How else will you learn?  You only get to be brand new at this one time.  Take advantage of it!  Take part in everything that you can, otherwise when you start teaching you will be like "who knew this was part of the job?".  

I made an information binder for Miss M just to introduce myself and our class.  The students haven't started back yet, but I have a rough idea what the class will be like.  This way I could be sure she had  important information (emergency procedures, phone numbers, faculty members, etc) right off the bat.  Here's what it looked like:

It had a welcome letter and all kinds of "fun stuff" inside:  About the Cooperating Teacher, About our School, Emergency info, About our Class, Daily Schedule, Class List/checklist, Log sheets for websites and ideas, and pages to create her lesson plans.

After the first day of school, we will sit down together and plan out her 10 weeks with me.  I call this The Grand Plan.  This way I know what I will be teaching, and she will have a heads up on which weeks she is teaching and when she is taking things over and handing them back to me.  

I have it all {here} if you're interested in checking it out.

(or click on the picture below)