I was falling asleep, barely aware of my surroundings, when I got the call this morning at 7:10am. I woke up on my own at 6:45am and realized I hadn't been called yet so I turned off my alarm and rolled over. Ultimately I'm glad I did get a position but I was super groggy when my phone started to ring.
Today I was a fifth grade teacher. At this particular school fifth grade is like middle school: each class of kids rotates to all four of the fifth grade teachers in one day. I was teaching math. I decided to start the day right by introducing myself and talking about my expectations. I told the kids that I expected them to be respectful and polite to me and to each other and that they could expect the same from me. I also drew three stars on the board. I told them each star was worth five minutes of free time at the end of the day and that they would lose stars for bad behavior. I found this tip somewhere on the internet (sorry, I can't find the link to the page anymore) and I've been forgetting to use it!
I think my strategy worked brilliantly. My "home" class was wonderful and every class that came to me for math was quiet and worked diligently. I introduced my expectations for each group but only used the stars for my "home" class. The teacher left lots of work to keep them busy and most of the transitions between class went well. I even had a chance to be bored! They all worked so quietly that I didn't need to do any monitoring at all and just sat at the teacher's desk and read over some material.
The teacher next door, the fifth grade science teacher, had told me in the morning that I had to be really strict with the fifth graders and I'm so glad that turned out to be untrue. Two of the kids even told me that I'm pretty (don't worry, they were girls).
I would recommend beginning the day with a discussion about expectations. The stars worked really well, although I didn't have 15 extra minutes to give them at the end of the day. I might make stars worth two minutes in the future.
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