Can you believe it's week eight?

I think that I had this notion that things would be a lot easier coming into year two. That's what everyone says, right? A lot of things are easier.  I have so much more knowledge to work with as I work with colleagues who are becoming friends. I have advice and resources to offer.  I have a sense of who I am as a teacher. I can look at my students' actions and decipher much more quickly what they need in that moment. I have more understanding of the importance of working alongside my parents and being a part of the community that my students live in.

But this year is also really new for me in a lot of ways and some days, it feels like I'm starting over again as a first year teacher.  I have been taken out of my comfort of teaching social studies - my long time educational love and my major in college - and pushed into taking on brand new content.  Not only am I learning science as I am planning out my units, I am trying to figure out what it means to teach a child to read and how to go about doing that.  As I was reflecting on the school year, I really cannot believe that eight weeks have passed already. How did that happen? I still have so much that I want to do with my students! I still have so much that I want to help them learn.

Teaching science has actually been a really fun transition. I am thankful for the exploration and inquiry that we learned about this summer in our class with Dr. Jarrett.  Reading Nurturing Inquiry, exploring the idea of play, and engaging in her science centers definitely changed the way that I thought about teaching science in a hugely beneficial way.  I have been able to watch my students come alive when they are given materials and expectations and then left to their own endeavors.  They are so curious about the world and given the tools and the freedom, they have made discoveries about plants and animals that I did not even consider when I was learning the content and making the lesson plans.  I have really been able to utilize the inquiry piece in a way that has created an exciting and engaging science class while still helping my students to learn the standard based material.  Another benefit that I have seen in this and that has aided my transition is that teaching science is a lot like teaching social studies due to its content based nature so many of my old tricks work for my students.

Some of my boys exploring plant properties using hand lenses

Xavier examines the roots of a celery plant to determine if it is a vascular or non-vascular plant

The struggle for me now is how to teach reading.  What do I look like as a reading teacher? What are the best resources for my students? How exactly does this whole "guided reading" thing work? What books are my kids going to love for book clubs? What do my fifth graders on a second grade reading level need most? How can I communicate with parents to show them ways to help their students with reading at home? How do I teach kids to read in a meaningful way that does NOT involve me just rolling through skills in common core standards? 

That was a moment in the brain of Ms. Ferguson. Nuts, right?

I don't have any of those answers yet but I am working on it.  I have figured out a lot of things that I don't want to do in my reading class over the last eight weeks. I have been seeking out resources and reading and working on the day to day execution of a balanced literacy program in my classroom. It's getting better and hopefully that will continue to be the case in coming weeks.  It WILL be the case in coming weeks.  

This week I am starting guided reading with my students.  This is going to give me a much better picture into what different students on different levels need as I move forward.  I am excited to push the critical thinking of my high students through middle school leveled texts.  I am excited to help my struggling students to gain more and more skills that will help them to decipher the words on the pages that are causing so much confusion right now.  I have no idea what this is going to look like for me, but week eight seems like a good time to get started really guiding my students to becoming better readers, not for the common core or the CRCT but for their future successes!