ECS 101 requires four half days of field experience throughout the semester.

For some of you young ‘uns I’m guessing this experience could be quite daunting. In this case, I’m grateful to have been working in education for over ten years. I’ve worked in numerous schools and plenty of classrooms. I’ve seen a lot of things during my years in education. And I keep showing up! I’ve worked with some absolutely amazing educators that have modelled what a functional, welcoming and successful classroom experience looks like.

I was grateful to spend time in a grade three classroom for my field experience because, over time, I have grown to enjoy my time in the grade three classrooms and feel like this is where I would like to end up once I’ve completed my bachelor’s degree.

The classroom was an inviting space with a nice colour scheme, a carpet for gathering for the class’ morning meeting and some alternate seating options for when the students participated in Daily 5 rotations. Over the four weeks there was changes to the classroom space with desks having been moved from one setup to another to allow for students to be sitting next to different peers. The teacher’s desk was located at the back of the room, there was ample white board space and a Loft board used for projecting different pieces of lessons.


Above: Not my classroom, but a similar pod style setup for seating was one of the seating arrangements that was in the classroom I visited.

 

Above: Loft boards have been arriving in the school I spent time at. These are interactive whiteboards, but also project from a computer. They are very sensitive to touch making the picture much more accurate than the old SmartBoard technology.

 

This particular classroom was not as complex as others I have worked in. There was  a full time educational assistant in this classroom that was working one-on-one with a student with diagnosed needs,  one EAL student not requiring language support, and others that participated in small reading groups, but overall this was generally a classroom without complex needs.

In one of our breakout rooms during our class time earlier in the semester we discussed the importance of being aware of the tone of voice that one uses with students. This is one thing that I did note as a less positive experience as there were times when the classroom teacher’s tone was not as kind as it probably could have been in order to have their students respond positively.

As busy as some of these experiences were, it fuelled my desire to continue on my journey to complete my degree and solidified how much I enjoy that eight to nine-year-old age group of students!