I have been given the amazing opportunity to work in a FIAP classroom for my 3-Week Pre-Internship block! Working with these students has been amazing. I have been able to see education through a lens that wasn’t available in my small town school growing up. FIAP is a program that helps students with special learning needs learn how to navigate the world, and add work-based skills to their understandings of life!
Learning to teach lessons in FIAP is definitely different than what I’m used to! I am used to basing my lesson plans off of a curriculum using the outcomes & indicators, but FIAP actually doesn’t have a structured curriculum. This was very different for me, but so fun to learn, and of course is very helpful for me to learn to adapt my lesson plans for a different type of program.
The students have been wonderful to work with and are so fun! Their classes are based on logic, home living, movement, art, kitchen, and workplace, all of which they can learn practical skills to enter the workforce in the near future. My placement partner and I have been given the awesome opportunity to teach lessons in Logic, Home Living, and the occasional co-teaching of workplace.
My First Individual FIAP Lesson!
My first lesson was tons of fun to teach! The students had been working on a detective unit which really excited me as someone who loves mysteries, Nancy Drew & Sherlock Holmes. I created a fun little “mystery find the difference” in which the students can point out differences and clues to solve the mystery and find the culprit of a fake ‘robbery’. I was very happy when I saw the students’ smiles while finding the clues and figuring out the story.
Time Management Lesson
My placement partner and I had agreed with our co-operating teacher that we would co-teach every other lesson. It was great for learning how to co-teach and work with another pre-intern for lesson planning.
Our lesson on Time Management was a huge success! Our co-operating teacher even said she was going to send it to another teacher in the school to use, and said it was awesome. Yay! Such exciting feedback. Learning from things that went ‘not-as-good’ is helpful, but hearing that a lesson was spectacular is so rewarding. Having so much go into a lesson plan and watching it become a success before your eyes is such a great feeling.
Here is a copy for your own viewing enjoyment!
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1k1C1nYwLfHABQ20YfgplCRFN31JjIqSRf1wQRKMcCCE/edit?usp=sharing
St. Patrick’s Day
What a fun lesson! My placement partner & I co-taught a fun little St. Patrick’s Day Scavenger Hunt around the school for the students.
Indigenous Food Dice
This was a cool one! I pasted some photos of traditional Indigenous foods onto some foam dice. I placed students in two groups, and had them roll dice to learn about the Indigenous foods. I, then, got them to place them into food groups (which they had been learning about previously). Tons of fun!
All About Me Flower
Seeing Spring had just ‘sprung’, our co-op asked us if we’d be able to incorporate some Spring content into the classes in the form of a reading, math, or craft activity. After much thinking – as we didn’t want the lesson to seem too ‘young’ for them, or be too difficult – we came up with the perfect idea. Making a flower where students could tell us a bit more about themselves.
We learned so much about these students that we wouldn’t have known – such as where students saw themselves after their Graduation (usually around age 22 for FIAP students). Such an insightful day, with a bit of Spring fun!
Grocery Lists
Wow! Have you ever had a day where your students totally shock you with how much they truly know? Imagine this – you’ve done a few lessons using assessment for learning to lead up to this one. You know your students are on track and you prepare for the lesson to last a while, as this one could be a bit of a challenge.
Then – just when you think your lesson will take a half an hour – it takes way less because your students are doing amazing at their tasks. This is what happened to me with my grocery lists lesson.
I set up a plan where each student was given a different bag with a different grocery list, but the same items. They were instructed to dump the contents of their bag onto the desk and find the grocery items that matched with their personal lists. They did so awesome at matching them so quickly and sharply! I was so proud of them.
We got to go onto my ‘if we get to it’ activity – which was an educational name the grocery item on the projector. They breezed through this as well and had tons of fun! As this day was a conference day for the students who aren’t in FIAP – they got to do some puzzles after their learning. Such a fun time, and such an enjoyable moment watching the students succeed so easily at what your ‘assessments’ (FIAP does not use a traditional grading system) deemed would be a bigger challenge. So awesome!