Author Archives: foste22a

Where the Green(ish) Grass Grows- Week 1

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Hello Everyone!

This week began my backyard learning project. I can already tell this will be a big project, but I’m hoping I can learn some valuable skills along the way. I am admittedly not a very handy person. While I do love the outdoors, I haven’t spent a lot of time learning any transferable skills in the yard-care department. But that is about to change!

My boyfriend and I purchased a house in September of 2018 that was a bit of a fixer upper. For the past year, we have largely focused our efforts on the interior of the house with some big transformations, but now that the weather is getting warmer, I figured it was time to start tackling the very neglected yard. There are some very big projects out there that span quite a large skill set, but I’m feeling optimistic so far.

This week I started with a walk through of the yard to consider some of the projects that I will hopefully be able to accomplish over the next few weeks. Some of these include:

-Prepping our deck and fence to be stained and sealed

-Fence repairs

-Trees and shrubs trimmed and pruned

-Building garden boxes, and maybe even planting some veggies

-Dealing with the weed problem and hopefully fixing our patchy grass

In the video below you can see how the first week went, and I even discovered a little surprise under our deck!

Some of the links I talked about in my week 1 video include this website about Suckers from trees, and this website helped me learn about Robin eggs and how they nest!

Beginning my EdTech journey

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Hi Everyone,

To start off, I’m Annissa. I’m a 24 year old student heading into my third year of elementary Ed. I live in my hometown of Swift Current and commute to Regina when necessary, so I must admit this lockdown situation has worked out rather well for me! Before I started at the U of R, I took roughly three years of Arts and Science at the U of S. I went in directly out of highschool with very little direction of where I wanted my life to go. I didn’t feel passionate about anything I was learning and felt like I had hit a dead end. After my third year I decided it was time for a change so I dropped out and moved to London, England where I became a nanny!

Photo taken by me outside of the Palace of Westminster

I really can’t find the words to describe what a wonderful experience I had abroad. Not only was I blessed with looking after with three of the most wonderful, smart, caring, and loving children, but I rediscovered my love of working with kids. I stayed in London for almost two years, but eventually I felt it was time to come home and return to school now that I felt inspired and passionate about something. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) U of S had just discontinued their two year sequential Education program the year that I applied, so I was lead to the U of R where I was accepted into the program. Without getting into the boring inbetween details, this leads me to today!

I was admittedly a little worried about this class, as I do feel as though I’m a bit out of touch with a lot of tech related aspects, especially when it comes to the realm of education. I had a twitter account in highschool that I rarely ever used and eventually forgot the username and password of, so I was a bit nervous to jump back into the twittersphere. However it doesn’t seem as scary as I thought it might be, as long as I steer clear of any of Donald Trump’s insane tweeting frenzies. You can follow along my Ed Tech journey here, if you’d like. I am looking forward to learning a bit more about what skills I can grow from this class and how to bring these into my future classroom. I am excited to get back into blogging and can’t wait to see what the semester brings!

Processed with VSCO, Photo taken by me

Week 3

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Teachers and Knowledge

The teacher in my grade 3 class is one of those teachers I aspire to be. Incredibly calm and collected even during the most hectic of moments! That was especially true during my visit this week, as I visited on a Friday. The students were obviously eager for the weekend, and it was difficult for them to focus during some parts in the morning. I loved seeing how the teacher approached the situation depending on the student in question. Some of the students only needed a gentle reminder, but for others they needed to switch tasks completely to become engaged again. It was excellent to see the free choice they had and how well the students could implement that when given the opportunity and trust to do so. In writing, the students were asked to describe how to make/do/create something step by step. The teacher listed a few prompts on the board but gave the students the choice to write whatever they wanted. I was lucky enough to get to conference with the students after and go through a checklist on their writing improvement. Some of the students wrote about how to carve pumpkins, how to tie a shoe, how to skateboard, how to make pancakes, or a variety of other different things. When conferencing, we never discussed steps they may have missed in their directions, spelling mistakes, or neatness. We talked only about making sure they had focused on one of the writing traits they were learning, in this case, informative writing. 

This class does have quite a few students with different academic needs, and luckily there is a large support of Educational Assistants throughout the day to help pull students for body breaks, small group work, and breakout groups for certain subjects they might need assistance with. The communication was important here between the teacher and the EA, and something I was glad I got to witness because I know this is something I will face in my teaching career. The staff always seems to be working towards a common goal; how to best educate the students, no matter how diverse their needs are.