Getting to know the students

So this week I went into Ms. Ingram's classroom twice to observe the students. The first time was on Wednesday. I sat in a circle with them and they introduced themselves. We all sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." Then two of the students presented projects they had made for their homeroom class. Each student was assigned an animal and had to present about that animal. I can tell the students are excited about animals, so I'm glad we get to continue with that subject next week.
On Friday I worked with two students as they finished up their animal projects. I helped one of them write sentences about turtles.
Ms. Ingram and I finished figuring out the details for the project. We are going to do a guided reading of the book "How Animals Move" over the course of two days. Each page has pictures of animals doing a particular movement. Then we will play charades with the children to have them act out different movements. The next two days we're going to use VoiceThread to have the students record themselves talking about the different animal body parts and animal movements.
I'm a little nervous for next week since it will be my first time teaching in a formal capacity. I'm glad that there are only 11 students in the group because I think that will be much more manageable.
After visiting Ms. Ingram's classroom a few times it made me realize that 30 minutes is really not a lot of time. (I have the students from 11:30-12 each day for four days). And it has helped me realize that you have to be flexible because plans don't always go as expected. I hope that I can stick to the lesson plans I've drawn up as much as possible, but I'm also trying to see this as a learning experience that unexpected things can happen and part of my job as a teacher will be to be prepared to react to those.