Day 36

I was observed yesterday by my director/assistant superintendent. I dunno why I'm always nervous until right up until the observation. I guess it's because I hate having to contain my thoughts and plans into something formulaic to show my observer that I get so caught up into writing it that I wonder if I'm really doing a good job teaching on a daily basis. Then when I finish putting it all down and actually start teaching the lesson, I realize that I'm behaving as I normally would whether or not an adult was watching because the kids are always watching me, and you can't really fake what you do because then the kids would be like, "Who the heck is this and what did she do with our teacher??" So I did what I had to do, and I did it in a relaxed manner.

The kids were good (my honors kids), the lesson was good (numbers 200-1.000.000), and the activities were good. I had them get into two teams of 9, each kid had a number 1-9 plus extra zeros. I called a "large" number [i.e. 5.728] and they had to assmeble their teammates into that number. Those who said the number in English would disqualify their team. For the next activity, I had them get into teams of 3. Each kid had to write 5 large numbers in decimal form on a card. There was a "caller" in each group who had to say the number out loud, in Spanish of course, while the other two teammates tried to be the first to "slap" the correct number. They had to alternate who the caller/slappers were. They enjoyed this much. Their "ticket out" was to write out in words several numbers from an activity in their text. They did this quicker than I thought, so I had them say 200-1.000.000 until the bell rang, calling on each student to say a number. We got to about 900 before the bell rang.

I got good initial reviews from my observer, so that made me happy. I'm sure there were mistakes made and things that could have been better, but there's always room for improvement in life. I'm satisfied with the way it went, and that's all that matters.