School Experience Overall

           There was definitely some mixed feelings as my School Experience came to a close but overall I am very happy. At the beginning of this practicum, I went in not having a clue how my classroom set up would go- the idea of three mentors with three different classes was extremely intimidating. We then figured out a schedule to where myself and Andrew would be able to work with all three of our mentors for the short practicum but would have to stick with one mentor for the long practicum when we return in February. During the final week some of the anxieties from the beginning of School Experience resurfaced during a bit of a schedule mix up but thankfully it is resolved and the new year looks promising once again.

            As the week was a phase out, I stepped back from being a prominent force in the classroom and acted as more of an observer. My goal from my fourth reflection was to observe students whose parents I did not meet during interviews so this was my concentration for the week. One of the major things I picked up during the interviews was that certain students showed extreme anxiety at home due mostly to workload. This is something that surprised me, mostly because of which parents said their children were having these troubles but with a closer look, I was able to notice signs that it was going to be a tough night with homework. My TM is very good at setting up assignments in class. The students are never expected to start something on their own, there is always an explanation and the whole class discusses the assignment before they are dismissed. It is when student are rushed that the anxiety comes out. If teachers do not plan effectively to recap a lesson, remind students of homework or refuse to answer questions that the students look harried and leave the class with a ‘look.’ This is something I will be planning for as I start my unit plans.

            The last two weeks have also been dedicated to building my final report for School Experience. Being able to see an example was very helpful in figuring out a template and for me, the rest went quite smoothly. I used our program goal outline sheet as a checklist and compared it to what I had reflected on in my personal journal. I actually was able to write my report quite quickly thanks to the effort I had put into reflecting.

            Overall, I am very happy with how the School Experience went. I had expected to be concentrating fully on my students and their learning but quickly found that I needed to balance my attention between them, scheduling, mentors and lesson planning. This woke me up to the realities of being a teacher. As I move forward into unit planning, I have confidence in my lesson planning abilities and look forward to planning with the my specific students in mind.

Collaboration Mural

The fruit of my labour!

I ended up teaching 2 and a half days last week. This project was a cross curricular Socials/ Fine Arts lesson where the students have been studying the United Nations and I was to introduce them to the Charter of Children's Rights.

First we read a page in their textbook that introduced the idea that children have specific rights and freedoms, why and when the Charter was created and then looked at a kid-friendly version of the actual document.

I then read "We Are All Born Free" to the students. This book was created by Amnesty International and is a collaboration of famous artists from around the world illustrating the Declaration of Human rights in the eyes of children. It is a beautiful compilation and the inspiration for the "FOR" assessment I used for this activity.

Collaboration Mural- Warning, it is a lot of prep! (but totally worth it)

First I typed the title of the book and the four categories of the Charter of Children's Rights into a word document, printed it, and divided it into 45 rectangles (9x5) to represent 45 pieces of paper. I then drew a line through each of the rectangles to create 90 sections and numbered them- one for each of my students.

 

 

Next I recreated this poster onto 45 pieces of paper. The model drawn on one piece of paper made it easy to understand what needed to be drawn on each section. I then cut each paper in half, just as I had with the sections in the model, gave one to each student and had them illustrate one of the articles in the Charter of Children's Rights to demonstrate what they look like- just as the artists had in "We Are All Born Free."

 

I demonstrated ways to integrate the symbols that may be on their piece of paper into their picture- some students loved it and some students traded with their friends who had a blank section. Overall, everyone was happy. 

 

The end result is a ginormous collaborative poster. The students loved coming in this morning and finding where their piece fit in or where their friends' was.

 

Although it took a lot of preparation on my part, I found this exercise an excellent way to see if the students 'got it' and a great example of integrating social justice and community.

Schedule Madness

This past week definitely flew by. From having a shortened week, shortened days and being insanely busy the entire time, I am not exactly surprised at the fast pace. The aim of this week was to teach two full days of classes so we understand the workload required and the physical toll we would experience. I ended up teaching two and a half days which was essentially the bulk of the classroom time for the whole week due to all of the interruptions. Wednesday and Thursday were early dismissals, at 1:38pm, due to parent teacher conferences and on Thursday, the high school put on an amazing Remembrance Day assembly. There was a representative from every grade participating from singing, dancing, reading essays, artwork and poetry. The school’s nurse brought in a Veteran from World War 2 and interviewed him in front of the school about his role in the war. He spoke of funny stories about his comrades, the frightening midnight trips on his motorcycle delivering messages from troop to troop and his overall message of his reluctance to share these stories as he does not feel that the war should be glorified; it was a very touching message.

The ultimate challenge this week was not the teaching- at this point I am very confident in front of my students- but the timing certainly was. I arranged with my TM that she would teach all day on Monday and the second half of Tuesday to wrap up what she had been doing with her students but the rest of the week was mine. Because of the restricted time, I only ended up teaching two different lessons to all three classes. The first class I did, I continued the class’ learning on the United Nations by introducing the Charter of Children’s rights. We read a page of the textbook together, I read a book produced by Amnesty International called “We are All Born Free” to the class and then had the students create individual posters illustrating one aspect of the Charter of Children’s rights similar to the illustrations from the book and then when all 90 posters are put together they create one giant collaborative poster. The lesson went over really well but very few of the students finished their poster so I ended up having to make my second Socials Studies lesson a work period to finish their posters. I opened the second class with a discussion about Remembrance day reinforced the ideas we had talked about in the first class by watching a video version of “We are All Born Free.” My Science lessons were similar in that I had an exciting activity in the first class and had a work period in the second that followed up on the activities accomplished in the first. Overall, this week I concentrated on classroom management by setting out my expectations and ensuring I followed through on them. The students were extremely respectful of my authority which I have to thank the connections I had been making with them the past month.

The second big thing that happened this week was parent teacher interviews. All three of our TM’s were extremely pro-active in having us participate but were a little worried about confidentiality and how some of the parents might feel having someone else in the room. Luckily, this was not an issue for all 24 of our interviews but just in case, I had printed off several copies of my introduction letter to use as reference. The interviews were extremely helpful. Not only was I able to gain experience in interacting with concerned parents but I was hearing details about my students from my TMs that I had not picked up on from my observations. I took really good notes in my notebook to use as a reference in creating future lesson plans and I was able to develop my experience with goal 11, having a strong connection with parents.

This week was a great experience in understanding the stress and flexibility of a classroom teacher. I was able to concentrate on setting the tone of my role in the classroom and it was extremely successful. I learned tons about my students from observing their work habits in groups and individually during work periods and from the surprises that came up during parent teacher interviews. At this point I am looking forward to wrapping up School Experience and going back to my cohort to collaborate on ideas on how to move forward with the information I have gathered. I will be spending this last week closely observing the students whose parents I did not meet during interviews in hopes to have more tidbits to use in planning my units for the new year.

Observations worth their weight in gold

Usually I reference my notebook for the past weeks happenings but this week was so busy that I didn’t make the time to reflect once. I need to ensure that no matter how busy I will be getting in the last few weeks of School Experience and during my long practicum that I make the time to stop and reflect on what is happening and my reactions to my classes. The requirements of the week were to teach three or four consecutive lessons to build experience in teaching a linked idea. The mentor I was with for the week was the math and PE teacher and we were able to arrange for me to teach three lessons in math, focussing on multiplication and introducing the formal algorithm. I was able to teach each of my three lessons three times and thus was able to recognize what was working and what was not and adjust.

            I was somewhat anxious for the planning of this week to begin as my teaching philosophy is quite different from the mentor I would be working under. I wanted to be able to implement technology such as the document camera and use manipulatives in introducing new topics, two things that this particular teacher does not use. I was pleasantly surprised that they were more than happy to let me try things out and gave me a lot of help in designing my lessons to be effective. The lessons themselves went over really well.

My first lesson was a continuation of the teacher’s previous lesson therefore I was able to focus on setting up my classroom management and establish my authority. My second lesson was on Halloween. I predicted that the students would be hyper and unfocused so I made sure I used manipulatives so they had something new to focus on. This lesson went really well and was a great introduction to my third lesson which dealt with a lot of heavy topics. This third lesson was heavily procedural as my teacher mentor wanted the students to learn the formal algorithm for multiplication, a procedural task in itself. I voiced that I wanted the students to understand why we use the algorithm and how it works and had a way of introducing this. My TM loved the idea and showed me another way to start out the algorithm, giving my lesson a very powerful three step process. The lesson was extremely successful, easily my favourite lesson I have taught to date.

All observations from this week have been amazingly helpful. They have allowed me to really put program goal 5, working with feedback, to use. I was even able to get Andrew to sit in on one of my lessons and do an informal observation. This was great as he knows the specific methods we have learnt in classes and has an idea of what I am trying to accomplish. His feedback as well as the feedback from my Teacher mentor and Faculty mentor will be part of my focus in creating lesson plans for the coming week.

Not so epic smiley faces

A fun teachable moment this week was when the students were assigned a writing task where they had to write a "How to" paragraph, describing how to make something. This student was writing on how to draw an 'epic' smiley face.

He approached me and asked me to check his rough copy over to see if he could begin his good copy. I started editing and realized that a fun way for him to see where he needed to add more detail in his writing was to have him read aloud his paragraph to me and I would draw according to his instructions.

This was the first copy of my smiley face and when I showed it to the student he burst out laughing and realized he needed to make a few changes- evidently this is not what the drawing was supposed to look like, then again, I am not exactly an artist.

This moment made me realize that it is easy to step back and let the student recognize where they need to improve and that it can be done in a fun way.

Starting to Use my Teacher Voice

The way I am measuring the success of this second week of school experience is the noticeable absent anxiety I had at the beginning of this practicum. I have finally settled into a ‘groove’ of sorts and am feeling the connections I am supposed to be making with my students and teacher mentors- connections that weren’t quite there last week. This week I spent 90% of my time in Ms. B’s classroom. For my observations, I taught one 20 minute lesson of an introduction to verbs three times to all three classes, was observed helping students accomplish a worksheet after it had been assigned for all three classes, and taught one 50 minute lesson to one class on the difference between fact and opinion using technology with the document camera. All three observations went really well and left me with lots of things to improve and reflect on.

            I may have interpreted the school experience calendar incorrectly, but it said to complete an extended observation of a student so I closely observed Sammy. Sammy is a ‘grey area’ student according to the school’s resource teacher. Tests have shown that he has a low IQ and problems interpreting oral instructions making him a slow learner. When put on task through prompts, Sammy is able to complete an assignment, albeit slower than the average student. Another factor in Sammy’s learning is he has poor fine motor skills which makes his writing very hard to read. Although he has many struggles, Sammy is a very social student. His group of friends are the ‘cool kids’ and he easily socializes with them and he is seen as their equal. Because he is deemed a ‘grey area’ student, Sammy does not qualify for one on one time from an aid. The resource teacher told me that teacher are encouraged to send him to the resource room where she has a program set up for assignments to be scanned in and read aloud to him which allows Sammy to understand the expectations better. In the two weeks I have spent at the school, I have not seen him be sent to the room once.

            As I move forward with this class, I need to be aware of Sammy and the other grey area students as there are many. The hands off approach of the school can be attributed to the “fundamental” learning that is going on but also may be that it is still early in the school year. I need to make sure to adapt my lesson plans so that they accommodate Sammy in a way that he will be successful in his learning.

            Another thing to reflect on this week is the feedback from my mentors. I realized quite quickly how easy it is to plan a procedural heavy lesson and the weight of it is noticeable when standing in front of students.  I need to break up the timeline of my lessons to integrate more movement and discussion of tasks between students. I really liked having the students work in groups and was surprised that classroom management was still easy to maintain. The students have done some group work with their teachers this far but have not been given the tools and instructions on how to work effectively as a group. This is going to be a challenge for me to consider as I move forward with this class. Some other feedback I got was to give specific time restrictions to the students before I send them off on a task. Letting them know that they only have ten minutes to accomplish something lets them know that they need to manage their time appropriately in order to have a result to share back with me and the rest of the class.

            As I look forward to the next week I know I will face some challenges. The teacher mentor I will be under has not had much one on one time with myself and may not be as comfortable letting go of their students or in completing observations of me. I want to integrate more technology into my lessons as it was extremely successful with my previous lesson but I know that may be intimidating for this teacher mentor as they do not use much technology. I plan on going into this week with a very open mind and lots of back up plans in my lesson plans so that the students are the ones who benefit most from my teaching.

 

*All student names have been changed for their protection*

Reflecting on the First Week

Week one of School Experience has opened my eyes to many things in many ways. Coming from a background of special education, where I was in front of several classes from time to time, I was quite surprised at how nervous I was to begin the week. I recognize that much of this anxiety came from not knowing the role I was going to be playing in my classes and not knowing exactly how my practicums would be set up and I am thankful to reflect that both of these anxieties has been solved. I feel a lot more confident moving forward with the year. The goal I focused on in my first observation was goal two, strong connection with students; more specifically, using the student’s names during the game we played during DPA. This goal is something I carried out during the week in trying to get to know my students. The approach I took in memorizing names was when the teachers had assigned the students work and I was walking around helping, I had my class list in hand and would ask each student their name and then look at the name on my list- connecting names to faces. This worked pretty well and by the end of the week I was able to call most students by name without my list.

                I really appreciate the assignment of talking to specific members of the school staff as I know I would have not branched myself out so fast. A real “ah ha” moment for me is when I introduced myself to the middle school janitor. She was hesitant to give up time in her busy schedule to sit down with us but reluctantly agreed to let myself and Andrew into a classroom afterschool to talk as she swept out the room. We let her know this was truly appreciated and we did not want to put any pressure on her. I opened the informal meeting with letting her know that we were here to find out how we, as student teachers, can make her job easier: what procedures the teachers go through in classroom clean-up, what time she aimed to leave each room by and such. She seemed genuinely surprised with these questions and expressed that she thought we had other intentions in setting up an interview. She happily let us knows what we can do and thanked us for giving her the attention we did. Every day, usually twice a day, since that interview, the janitor has greeted me by name and asked me how my day was going. Although some of the other interviews I participated in generated more “useful” information, this was my favourite as I can tell our presence has more meaning for her than if we had not sought her out.

                Something I have taken from this first week of observation is recognizing the similarities and differences in the teaching styles of my teacher mentors. Although I disagree with some practices and agree with others, I have been able to take away something from each mentor. Overall, I have picked up the importance of reflective practice. This is not only as a teacher reflecting on what has worked well and what you could do differently, but allowing the students to reflect on these same questions in their learning. For example, in a physical education class where the students were learning specific skills in volleyball, the teacher clearly explained, modelled and set out guidelines for each skill. The students were given an adequate amount of time to practice and then were expected to move on to the next skill. This worked well for the majority of students but there were some that struggled. I realized that if the teacher had halted the exercise before moving on to the next and asked the students to describe what was working well, the students who were struggling might have been able to pick up some pointers from their peers.

                Other things I have taken away from this week are specifics about students and routines. I realize that I will need to request gym, library and tech room schedules for future lesson planning. Other routines I still need to learn are how the teachers upload homework assignments and worksheets to Edmoto and how the attendance is taken on BCeSIS.

                I can easily say in reflecting this first week that it was a success. I began with a bucketful of anxieties and finished the week feeling exhausted but relaxed with how the future will look. I got to know many of my students, pick up on the small things in running an effective classroom, make connections with several staff members and sort out the rest of the year. As someone who needs to have an idea of what their future looks like, being able to sit down and talk schedules and expectations with as much detail as we did was amazingly uplifting. I feel confident, prepared, and excited to continue my school experience and open to the other emotions I know I will go through.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

What?!? It's the middle of October?!?

Tis the eve of School Experience and it seems like all of my ducks are in a row....except for the mountain of assignments I have yet to finish. But for the most part, I am basically on track.

Looking back a year ago, I would have never guessed I would have accomplished so much thus far in the Teacher Education Program. I am both overwhelmed and exhilarated with the work I am doing and I'm all set up for my first week in my school. It took a while to realize that I am not going to get an elementary school experience in  middle school. The rotation of classes and multiple teachers is going to make it tricky for observations and lesson plans, but so far it looks like it will work itself out.

For the first observation, we were supposed to be working with one or two students on a short task, but instead I am going to lead a more informal lesson to the whole group of students- Chuck the Chicken. I feel that this will allow me to be easily accepted by the students as it is a light, fun game as well as it will be fairly easy for my teacher mentors to observe, letting them get used to the system as well. Then my wonderful Faculty mentor plans on stopping by on Friday to check in on us. This wasn't a required meeting but she insisted because she is awesome.

Overall, although I have a ton to do still for my classes, between my placement buddy and my wonderful mentors and faculty, I am confident that this first week will be a fantastic start to my School Experience.

10/15/13

What am I doing?!?

I guess I need a space to relieve my thoughts and ideas as I continue my journey to having my own classroom! As I am always learning from others, it seems fitting to recognize that someone is always teaching me....hense, "Time to Teach the Teacher."