Happy Friday!

We made it!  This week has totally flown by and we have accomplished a lot here in 2nd grade!  I feel like I have slowly but surely been learning more names of staff members here and am starting to feel like I am a part of the school community!  

Earlier in the week I got to attend a meeting about DRA scores.  My CT was not as excited as I was to go to the meeting...but it was my first one!  For all of you non-educators out there, DRA stands for Developmental Reading Assessment and it is done throughout the year as a way for the teachers to monitor student progress as well as help students set goals for their reading.  The week before I arrived is when my CT completed all of the tests and she scored them last weekend.  I got a chance to take a look at the test as well as learn just a tiny bit about how they are scored and what the results are used for. It is amazing to me the range of reading ability in our classroom.  We have some students who are still reading at a beginning of first grade level while others are above the 5th grade level!  I enjoy watching how my CT approaches reading and the different strategies she has to reach such varied abilities among students.

On Thursday I finished the first section of my big huge teaching portfolio that is due on April 15th as well as a lesson plan for when I get observed on Monday.  It is funny to me how worked up I was during the past when I was getting observed during my clinical experiences.  Now that I am here full time I am not so worried about being observed.  I feel very comfortable and at home here and I know the students better already than I ever did in a past clinical.  

I am enjoying reading posts on facebook and hearing from friends about how their student teaching is going.  I can't wait until we meet next Tuesday for our first seminar!  I feel like we are going to need hours to catch up on everything.

I just took a break from filling out my 12 questions on WECAN, the online database for educators in Wisconsin.  This is where you upload resumes and then complete these 12 generic questions about education and your goals for being an educator.  The hardest part about the questions is that there is a limit as to how much you can write...and I am wayyyy too wordy for having a short limit!  It is so bizarre to think that in the next six weeks I will be sending in applications for jobs during the next school year.

Next week we are going to be VERY BUSY!  Monday is my observation, Tuesday we have a field trip to the YMCA where we will be able to swim, ice skate, play soccer, and more!  And then Wednesday is the 100th day of school where we will be dressing up as 100 year old's!  Right after school tonight I am heading off to a wedding for one the guys Alec works with which should be a lot of fun!  I'm looking forward to every bit of it and will be sure to keep you in the loop! ;)