Hello! My name is Anneliese Davis and I am a grade 1 teacher working in Regina Public. I grew up on an acreage by Craven, Sk, and went to school in Lumsden. The outdoors has always been a large part of my identity and through my master’s experience, I have re-discovered that passion for involving and incorporating nature into my lessons. This experience has also sparked a curiosity and goal of creating more play-based/ experiential learning opportunities for my students, especially regarding reading and writing instruction. The longer I have taught the more I seemed to become panicked with reading levels and scores and I have had to work at grounding myself back to my original pedagogies and philosophies.

I would have originally said my experience with online/ blended learning would have been minimal and honestly negative. However, after reading chapters 4, and 

9 as well as our class discussion I have come to realize that these terms have a larger meaning than what I originally thought. When I think of online learning I  am thrown back to March 2020 when panic arose and I think all teachers were given whiplash from the switch from in-person learning to moving entirely online. I remember

 being incredibly stressed, lost, and overwhelmed during this time. The biggest barrier my teaching partner and I faced was; How do we do this for 6-year-olds and what does it look like? In the end, we developed a series of Google slides that was shared with our families with activities and a schedule for the day, but it mostly had to be led by the adult the child had in the home. 

Now that my understanding of online and blended learning has broadened I see that I use blended learning more in my classroom than I thought. I have students who use iPads as communication devices, we practice using iPads to access resources for math and literacy and integrate those into the day. I still would say that my use of technology is minimal in my classroom. It is an area I would like to become more comfortable with incorporating. As stated in our text, a lot of traditional classroom teaching was designed for a different age, as education grows and develops we require different teaching methods to meet the diverse needs of our students. It also touched on another interesting aspect of integrating blended learning into the classroom which is a greater focus on skill development versus memorization. We also discussed this in our break-out rooms during our lecture and this was a light bulb moment for myself. Often teachers rely on an I do, we do, you do model, but this model is not always the best way to develop critical thinking and problem-solving in our students. 

The challenges I face are my limited knowledge of technology and ways to use it and being able to use technology in a way where my students (grade 1’s) can use it effectively and independently. As mentioned earlier, I have two really big passions when it comes to teaching grade 1; Nature and reading/writing. I would love to find out how I could use technology and blended learning when it comes to these concepts. I hope to find a way to use technology more in my classroom in meaningful and different ways.