*Photo Gallery*

A picture is worth a thousand words...

Manchester Elementary School: I completed my student teaching at this school.

As you can see, the flowers are sprouting up, just like the students.

This is a picture of my 1st grade student teaching class. Their bright, smiling faces are one of many things that I love about about teaching. Now within the picture you can see that two of my students are holding up paper animals, a horse and a snake. Earlier that day, I had given each student an animal bookmark, one that was fit their personality. I even wrote a special message on the back of their books. Hopefully they will have kept them and in sometime within the future they will find them and think back on the times I shared with them.

In response to reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, my first grade students wrote their own stories, in which they answered the prompted question shown in the picture above. As you can see, each cookie has a bite taken out of it; however, the same person did not eat everyone's cookie. Some students blamed it on their classmates, others said their siblings did it, and wouldn't you know, some claimed it was me!

Upon the arrival of St. Patrick's Day, my first grade students and I talked about what we thought was at the end of a rainbow. Some of their stories were so fascinating that I just had to let them write it out, so that their peers could read it, as their work would be hung out in the hallway. One story that I will never forget is that there is a pot of fish at the end of a rainbow and not a pot of gold. It is sure amazing as to how a young child's mind works.

Teachers do more than teach, they impact lives in ways they could have never imagined. To thank my first grade cooperating teacher for all the support and encouragement she provided me, as well as all the students, I came up with an crafty idea. I had the students trace their hands and write their names upon them, and then we thought of a phrase that we could place upon a poster board. After much consideration, we finally decided upon "We wanted to give you a round of applause for all the help you have given us! Thank you, Mrs. Lambert's Class."

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This picture is of my 4th grade student teaching class. These students differ from my first grade class in so many ways, yet they share many similarities too. For instance, one commonality that is visible among both groups is that they are wearing a beaming grin. I look forward to seeing their faces light up like this when they get excited about an activity, finally understand a concept that had been troubling, or are just in an all-around good mood.

One of the books that my fourth grade students and I read together was The Sign of the Beaver. In response to one of the character's actions, an older man stealing a young boy's rifle, they created wanted posters. They used character descriptions to draw his features. As for what information to put on the poster, that came from our class discussion on the issue of slavery and how some owners displayed posters to try and find their "property."

To take a break from our regularly scheduled lessons and let the students' minds rest up a bit, my cooperating teacher and I read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes to our students. As you can see in this picture, two students are sharing a copy, seeing as how we did not have enough for everyone to have their own. However, the students never once complained about sharing. Instead, they took turns holding the book and flipping through the pages.