Classroom Management: Coming into the classroom in the last 9 weeks of school as the long term substitute gave me the opportunity to treat the classroom like the first weeks of school. I started my first day with 5th grade like the first day of school. I redecorated and organized the classroom to set a new tone in the classroom. Along with a new classroom, I started the first day following the first week of school guide in the Responsive Classroom Philosophy. I started my day with a Morning Meeting, where I introduced myself as the teacher, gave the students an opportunity to introduce themselves, and then jumped into addressing expectations. As a class, we came to the conclusion of having three rules in our classroom. These rules were to take car of ourselves, our environment, and others. Every student then wrote on a note card one way in which they would do each of these things and signed their name at the bottom. These were then posted on our bulletin board with our class rules posted. We worked on our new classroom routines and transitioned into preparing for the PSSAs. To start the first day, I prepared a read-aloud that introduced our new Unit on Westward Expansion in Social Studies.
PSSAs: When I took the long-term substitute, I came in just weeks away from the PSSAs. To help me prepare the students for the PSSAs, I cotaught with a former 5th grade teacher who was working as an Interventionalist at the time. We worked together to create interactive ways to engage the students in preparing for the Text Dependent Analysis, Text Dependent Questions, and Grammar Stand-alone questions. This included informal debates, four corners, standing up or down, showing choice by holding up fingers, thumbs up or down, and many more activities to physically and actively engage students. I had the opportunity to then proctor the PSSAs. This gave me the opportunity to see the PSSAs be given and understand the structure of the test and how to meet the needs of my students the next opportunity I have to teach an upper grade level.
ELA and Social Studies: As much of my time in ELA focused on helping the students prepare for PSSAs, this gave me the opportunity to really focus on Social Studies and engaging lessons with Westward Expansion and the Civil War. The students had the opportunity to orally present in front of their peers and gain confidence on being in front of peers. The students were given different choices to present information. They could make Google Slides, Shoebox Dioramas, Poster-board Presentations, and even just writing a report. The students had the opportunity to work individually and in a group. The students experience Jig-Saw learning. While the students learned about different times in history, they gained the skills of working with others, communication, and being comfortable in front of their peers.