I find that the state standards are probably the biggest difference. They are given weekly benchmarks from the district. Every school in Osceola County is learning the same thing by grade level. All of the materials are provided for the teachers from online resources to textbooks and workbooks. One thing that I really like is that the school has all of their textbooks online as well. Each lesson from the book has a really neat Smart Board lesson included with it. My class is made up of 17 gifted and high learning children which makes it really neat and allows more time for lesson extensions and time to challenge them.
The school itself is really great. I love the communities of "prides" in the school. My favorite thing is getting to walk outside any time we leave the classroom. When the kids go to gym, music, art, and lunch we get to enjoy the sun because the hallways are outside! I love love love getting some sunshine during the day other than through the window. Recess is great in the warm weather and we even have a school garden! In addition to the regular specials that the children go to, each Friday they get to pick a "student enrichment cluster" to attend. They get to go to classes such as cooking, dancing, drawing, games, etc. I'm helping out with the jump roping class! On Wednesday's the kids have an early release (yes every Wednesday), and the teachers have a meetng after school until the normal release time or they get extra worktime in their rooms. I'm really enjoying all of these new experiences and learning how to do things in a different way.
I'm loving my students and my classroom. I started a new behavior program called the O.S.C.A.R. Awards and they LOVE it! It's working sooo well. One of the best things is that my class is so diverse. I even have a girl from Russia and a boy from Puerto Rico, and several others strong backgrounds from different countries. I actually have a girl from Westerville, Ohio in my class too! So like I said, they love the O.S.C.A.R. Awards. It stands for Our Students Can Act Responsibly. I give the children tickets when I catch them doing good things. They get to collect their tickets and save them to earn prizes. There are different prize levels, each of more value as they save tickets. In addition, when their behavior gets a little out of control they have to move a clip with their name on it from Take 1, Take 2, Take 3, and Cut (levels with different consequences). They are so well behaved now because they don't want any of their tickets taken!
My days at school are going very fast. I can't believe that I'm approaching week 3 already! In the morning I am teaching reading, spelling, writing, and centers. In the afternoon is math, science, and social studies. This past week was kind of crazy because of Halloween. Here in Celebration, Halloween is a really big deal. Each house not only gives out candy but they also decorate hardcore. The students all wore costumes on Monday and we held a "Fall Festival" in the afternoon. The teachers were asked to dress up as storybook characters so Hannah and I dressed as Ms. Frizzle and the Magic Schoolbus. It was a hit!
On Monday I'm having my first supervised lesson. I'm teaching about clouds. I'm very excited and can't wait to do the activity. We've been doing a unit on weather and I'm loving it. I even did a lesson with Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, my favorite book. The kids were so creative and wrote neat stories with pictures. I'm planning on working hard on lessons and having some fun enjoying Celebration and Orlando this weekend! Hopefully getting some time seeing everything and maybe even going to Disney!
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