"High Five for Complete Sentences"

If you don’t already know how student teaching works, it starts off with a student teacher taking on a subject week after week. It is around mid-semester where all teaching responsibilities are handed over on a golden platter, with a smile of course! I can remember since high school the fear of student teaching and taking on all subject areas all in one day. Student teaching so far for me has been an amazing and engaging experience. More importantly I have been learning the gradual release theory in action with my CT (cooperating teacher) and myself. Slowly but surely I am finding my little nook in this teaching world and today marked a pretty big milestone…. it was my first lesson!

The first subject I have chosen to take on is writing! My CT and I thought this would be a great subject to start off with and a chance to get my feet wet before diving deeper into the curriculum. Planning for this week’s lessons, revolved around writing Complete Sentences! I have to say, I had a lot of fun coming up with engaging fun lessons for my third graders this week.

Today we focused on the topic of Complete Sentences and what is needed to compose a Complete Sentence. I found a great idea (on pinterst of course) over the “High Five for Complete Sentences”. This poster helped my students really understand all the parts needed into making a complete sentence and helped guide them through today’s activity.

After reviewing the “High Five for Complete Sentences” poster and discussing the two parts that make up a sentence (subject/predicate), the students engaged in a Complete Sentence dice activity. I have to note that these dice took me about three hours to create/cut/fold/glue! Aside from all that, my students had a phenomenal time playing with these dice. The objective of this activity is to roll a subject and predicate dice and create a Complete Sentence. It was funny to watch the students roll sentences such as “The pencil was very angry”. In these moments, students would refer to the “High Five for Complete Sentences” and say, “Well that doesn’t make sense!” (WOOOOOO!!) I’m pretty sure this was my first teacher proud moment. My students understood the objective today and walked away knowing how to compose a Complete Sentence properly! After today was said and done, this activity was placed in our classrooms reading/writing center for extra practice.

Below are some pictures of the activity from today’s lesson. Even though I am not able to post pictures of my students engaging in these moments, I will be sure to document what things they get to do!

Enjoy!

Where have you been?!

I’m sure all of you are wondering “where the heck is Lauren?”… But before even starting to explain my absence from Apples and Sprouts, I just want to say I’m sorry!!! Life has been happening more than I expected in the past month and a half. While I have taken on blogging as my getaway throughout student teaching, I underestimated the time/effort needed to make this semester as successful as possible. I will say that you have not missed out on much!!

 I'm back!

                In this post, I want to brief you Apples and Sprouts followers about what things I have been doing these past couple of months and also explain what is to come, starting tomorrow (First day of teaching). So let’s take it back a little bit and start with August. Early August I had a wonderful opportunity to visit my family in Oregon for two weeks before student teaching (Partially the reason as to why I have been absent from the blog world). I went camping for the first time on the Oregon coast and even ate my first oyster, surprisingly yummy! It was such an amazing trip, full of great memories with my family. Here are a couple pictures of my adventures!

My amazing cousins and I on the beach.

My lovely cousin and bride to be!!

Dungeness crab anyone? 

Uncle doing it right with the oysters!

Auntie and Uncle!

Crab hunting at sunset!

Had to put this in here... I made my first homemade apple pie up in Oregon!!

While vacation was amazing and well needed, reality had to sink in sooner or later. Since I have been back from Oregon, I have been officially inducted as a student teacher! As I stated earlier in this post, I don’t “Officially” start teaching until tomorrow. So, that may lead you to asking “Well, what have you been doing up until now?” Since starting this Journey, I have had the opportunity to attend many new and exciting things, such as the 2014-2015 NISD convocation and of course meet the teacher! The school I am student teaching at, has made me feel so unbelievably welcomed and appreciated in many ways. Even though my time to shine as a certified teacher is not to come until December, I definitely feel a part of the team every day!

Here are a couple photos from the NISD convocation. Who knew so many teachers could rock it like it was a Katy Perry concert?! ;)

Yes, my nights are usually filled with typing lesson plans and gluing foldable models for my students. I also know that I created Apples and Sprouts to inform all of you bloggers about my journey and how I am growing as a teacher. So that leaves me here at the end of this post, to explain my goals for this blog. It is my goal to sit down every night and reflect to myself and all of you about my day in the classroom. Good days, bad days, exciting days and everything else that entails my journey.

Starting tomorrow I will be kicking off my teaching journey and boy do I have some things up my sleeve! Until then, goodnight friends! (Thanks Nancy Grace hehe)