Senior Seminar Week Ten

I can't believe I've been student teaching for ten weeks already!  Time has flown by so quickly.  This week was a very short and odd week.  There was no school on Wednesday due to Veteran's Day, and on Friday it was a school improvement day so the kids weren't there.  On Friday, I attended three different learning sessions that I thought were really helpful.  The first session was about how to promote literacy and encourage young readers to want to read on their own. Secondly, the session was about how to integrate collaboration in the classroom, and the final session was on promoting reading strategies for the younger grades.  I feel like I learned a lot and it was really helpful to have gone through these sessions. The second half of the day was dedicated to prepping for the next week and getting things organized.
As I am interacting with the students a lot more, I'm learning that teaching the younger grades is a lot more work!  It is one thing to know how to do something that seems like second nature as an adult, but it is quite another to explain why you do something and exactly how to do it.  I'm really lucky that my cooperating teacher has had a lot of experience with this age and grade so that I can learn different techniques from her to help me.
This upcoming week I am going to be taking the reins in the classroom, and I am both excited and nervous.  In my previous placement, I was teaching content that I am really well-versed on, whereas in this placement I am kind of jumping in head first.  The school I am at has everything planned out really well, so it is helpful for me to be able to look at the coming weeks and know "oh, that's what is coming up, that's what I am supposed to teach," but it is nerve-wracking to be able to see that and know that I have never taught these lessons.
A goal of mine for this next week is to become better versed in more techniques for teaching this age group, and to work on my confidence.