Back in the classroom again today. This is the classroom where I did the long-term subbing a couple years ago, so I'm very familiar with the day's schedule and the curriculum. Their regular teacher knows me well, so she planned a normal day of lessons with the students. A nice challenge for me as opposed to the usual easy days teachers plan for subs. It felt like I had never stepped away from teaching.
Of course the students were chatty since this was their first day back from Christmas break. We managed though. The day was busy enough there wasn't much down time for mischief.
The second class of 5th graders had a little extra time after their English lesson for me to read aloud. We picked the book Lost in the Wild, a choose your own adventure book about surviving in the Boundary Waters of MN. The class wanted to die, so they tried choosing bad idea paths. We did finish one storyline that ended with the death of the sister, and then went back to try again. We ran out of time but were able to finish the story after social studies later in the day. I could tell the students were waffling between making choices they wanted to and ones they thought would end in disaster. It was cool to listen to their interactions as they debated what choices to make. A surprise to no one, we kept going with endings and revising choices all the extra time we had, so we had to stop in the middle of a story thread- the boy just found his sister trapped by a mama bear. They had me leave the book with them so their regular classroom teacher could finish reading it to them sometime.
My day ended with PE. Not my favorite subject. You'd think it wouldn't be so bad being the teacher instead of the student. Wrong. All the squirrelyness comes out at PE, even the typically well-behaved kids. We played four corner hockey. It was the first time they were exposed to the game and they were super confused even with the video explanation. Basically, there are four teams- one in each corner of the gym. They have a goal made of cones and there are four pins set up in the goal. Each team wants to knock down everyone else's pins and bring them back to their goal. Sounds simple enough.
Setup took a ton of work: 20 cones, five in each corner. 16 pins, four in one color for each corner (the bonus pin, one per team), three of one color for each team (although I suppose you wouldn't have to have them be color coded. Then there are a ton of foam balls rolling around the floor which are irresistible to students with hockey sticks. So the majority of the class hit balls with their sticks while I tried to get the PE set up students actually setting things up. We only played for 10 of the 30min PE time when it was all said and done. Lots of grouchy kids tattling that someone snuck into the goal to knock down a pin or went behind the goal to knock them down. I'm sure it will be more smooth the next time they play. Not many of them enjoyed the game, so I'm sure there will be a lot of complaints the next time they attempt to play it...
Now time to head home and see Jaron! I'm curious how he did hanging out with G all day at work...
