Wednesday, April 22

Earth Day, Today was messed up as well. The Earth Day activities took up most of Fourth and all of 5th and 6th period. So to keep things even and on track today I showed the Isaac Newton video to 1st and 3rd period. I don't like having so many wasted days in my teaching experience but I guess that is just part of the pitfalls of teaching, dealing with all the last minute changes to the schedule. The earth day activities were quite educational though. My ST and I hosted a scavenger hunt where the kids had to find things on the front lawn of the school grounds. They had to find things such as a bird feather an earth worm, parts of a flower , certain kinds of rocks and a variety of plants bugs leaves and other things. They had a lot of fun, and I did too.
In regards to reflecting on the cheating, I have but one thing to relate in my teaching experience so far. In my first placement near the end of it, I was giving a test and My ST was not there, there was a sub with me. I was really green about giving a test. I thought I was watching pretty close, then at the end of the class a girl came up to me and told me that the girl beside her was cheating off of her and she was upset about it. I felt really bad about it and I really did not know what to do about it. I did think that I could punish the girl for cheating since I didn't catch her. I told my ST the next day and he said that He would confront the girl about it. That was my last day with that placement and I never did ask what was ever done with it. It did teach me a valuable lesson though. I have since been a lot more observant of what is going on and having that sense of withitness in the classroom.