Yeah, I could send notes home for good days! On most days I have prep in the last half hour of the school day so it would work out that I would be able to have the whole day and then have some quiet time to write them!
I went to observe a 17 year teaching veteran who has a really difficult class of kindergarteners this year and it took her until December to really get a hole on her kids. She does a ticket system where they can earn and be fined tickets. Then when they get 10 (they can only count them at snack time, though i'll have to figure that one out for me since we usually have snack outside with recess) they get a trip to the treasure box. Her kids have little pouches on the ack of their chairs for all their papers/notebooks so they just put an envelope with their tickets in their chair. My kids don't have those so they will have to put them in a pocket chart that I hung in the room for them with a little pocket for each kid.
The other hesitation on parent contact (because I do agree, some of my kids have great parent/guardian support) is that one time I wanted to do that for a kid (one where the kid's attitude got out of control) and my master teacher didn't seem open to the idea.
Not sure that having the kids do physical activity they don't like as punishment is particularly allowed, though I'm not sure if it would work as an alternative to recess. But also, it might be difficult to monitor and do...
Yeah, I do separate them at recess time when they are on the wall. There's plenty of wall space for that so it works out well. The back table is a little different during lunch time but during recess they might be able to spread out. I'm not in charge of that part though.
I've been talking to my master teacher a little and I've tried these ideas. I'm not sure at this point what she thinks the problem is though, but I'm kinda scared to ask.
Exactly, the worst possible time to student teach- though fall would also be rough- when all their teachers have some semblance of control over them but they are getting antsy and I'm here with very little control and they are getting antsy. Plus without that control they see me as a pushover already so it's extra difficult to reign them in when I started bad somehow (I learned this as a 13 year old day camp assistant- better to start strict and loosen up then to start loose and have to become stricter, and yet somehow it got away from me)
It's rough because i only have 5 weeks to get this in control to show that I do know what I'm doing for passing student teaching and getting letters of rec... so even though it took the 17 year veteran 3 months (for a different class, but still, same school and all, I'm supposed to do it in 2... They may understand this but I'm not really sure.
Thanks for all the help guys! I'm hoping this ticket thing will work out well. Gonna have to go to the dollar store tomorrow. I've got enough for now, but I've got to get more and figure out how to fit it into the schedule.
