On October 10, Ms. Gagnon and myself entered Ethel Milliken Elementary School for the very first time and got to observe the grade 5/6 students in Ms. Brentnell’s class for the first half of the morning.

We were then given the time after recess to introduce ourselves and play some different introduction games with the students to better learn more about who we’d be learning from for the rest of the semester.

Our introduction game went super well. Both Ms. Gagnon and myself wrote out 10 random facts about ourselves. We then wrote our names on the board with a line down the middle to divide our names. Students were given random facts and told to go up to the board and stick it under the name that they thought it belonged to. Students got very involved and had so much fun guessing and telling each other where to place their facts. After all the facts were put up, we sorted them and put them with which pre-intern teacher they actually belonged to and then explained a little about each fact.

We then got students to move the desks and form a circle. A ball was passed to each student and they had to say their name and one thing about them that starts with the same letter as their name when the ball was tossed to them.

To finish off our introductory activities, we had little recipe cards that we passed out to each student. On it they were supposed to finish the sentence “One thing I want Ms. G and Ms. C to remember about me is….” and then they could tell us anything they’d like about themselves and some students decorated them with pictures.

It was a fun first day and very exciting to be in the classroom for the first time and meeting all the students! They were all so welcoming and also excited to have us there.

 

 

November 14 – Emoticon Art Lesson

Prior to this lesson I had been emailing with Ms. Brentnell and she had suggested that I do a lesson using plasticine. She then offered the example of a lesson she had done the year before where students created Emoticon art with plasticine so I used her idea and created a lesson plan. Thankfully her class was fully stocked with brand new plasticine and all I had to do was divide it up into little bags for each student and also cut squares of cardboard that the students would be putting their art onto.

Now art is typically done at the end of the day, and this is the time when all the students are extremely energetic and chatty so having an activity where they can move around and chat is absolutely perfect for them. However, the one difficult part is getting them to be quiet enough so you can actually explain an activity. I started the lesson by showing the trailer for the Emoji Movie and then passed out papers of different emoticons as ideas of what they might like to create. The students were all very excited about this all and it was made clear that they can create their own unique emoticons if they didn’t want to use a pre-existing one in their art.

The one challenge with this class is the very different rates at which some students finish their work compared to others. Some will spend a great amount of time perfecting their work whereas others will try to finish as quickly as they can so they can move onto something else… hoping for free time I think. Ms. Brentnell tries to prevent this by getting students who finish early to keep adding more detail and trying to get them to spend more time with each project rather than rush through it.

Overall it was a super fun activity and students seemed to really enjoy getting to create their own emoticons and it was interesting teaching an art lesson because I am not exactly someone who is artistic but I definitely think I can handle teaching stuff like this.

Some awesome examples of student’s work are added below!

The picture below is of the student’s lining up to enjoy their lettuce they have grown in the class. Such a cool classroom project to have happening. Later that week they were planning to have a classroom Caesar salad with their beautiful lettuce they’ve grown and each student would be responsible for bring a cup of croutons or some cheese or dressing to add to the salad. They also have other plants growing and it has been fun to watch them all grow as the semester has gone on!

November 21 Reflection 

November 28 – Point of View Literacy Lesson

This was my last day in the classroom and it was certainly a bittersweet day.

Ms. Brentnell gave me the freedom to choose any topic at all within literacy to teach to her students and I decided I would attempt a lesson on point of view and perspectives.

I did not realize that this would possibly be a bit of a challenging topic for students to grasp. The time when I got to teach was between 10:45-11:45 and it just so happened that all the grade 6 band students were gone during that time for practice. Also, that day I arrived to a classroom that was 39 degrees Celsius! I kid you not. So obviously we could not stay in the classroom with is being that hot and I got to teach in the library with my reduced student size.

I started by reading a story that was told from two different points of view. One of the characters and then the narrators. I asked the students what the differences between the story was, hoping they’d notice it was the same story but from different perspectives. But that isn’t exactly what happened. They didn’t quite catch that, so not entirely how I planned but I could move along and teach them from their guesses.

Together on the board we discussed first person point of view and third person point of view and also about perspectives. To do this I put up a picture and we went through each point discussing how the characters could be the possible perspectives and then created sentences from first person point of view and third person point of view.

The picture below is the the outline that I followed and drew on the board, however it was a different picture that we did together as a class. I then handed out different picture with the same type of format that student could work on in pairs or individually if they preferred. They were told to first identify the different perspectives in the picture and then write a little story about what was happening from the first person point of view and then from the third person or narrators point of view.

Some students really struggled with this activity but other flew through the assignment and I would give them a different picture to work on. Eventually students were given the option to share their stories with their peers and some students had excellent stories!

I have found during this semester that this class loves to share their work and will willingly do so whenever given the opportunity so I tried to provide ways of them sharing with their peers in my lessons and will continue to do so next semester.

Below is one example of a student’s work.