Category: Pre-Internship Blog ECS 311

Today was the last day of pre-internship for this semester. It was a bittersweet feeling having accomplished this milestone, and yet I know I’m only halfway finished with pre-internship as I come back in March for 3 weeks.

I started my morning in the Grade 7 classroom. The students had a presentation the day before, teaching them about gaming and gambling. The first thing they had to do today was fill out a quiz about their own gaming habits. After they finished their quiz, they were asked to work on a blog post reflecting on their results. The students were asked if they were surprised by the results, how it made them feel, and if their self esteem was affected by their gaming experiences. The results were varied, some students had very low scores and others quite high, reporting that they play video games every day after school and their parents don’t care if that’s all they do.

Grade 7 is a different world than what I have gotten used to. I was met with skepticism from the students as I roamed around and interacted with them. I had one student outright ask me “Who are you and why are you here?”,  some pushed back for having to do any work at all and others who were receptive to me and shared their blog openly.

After recess, I was back to my home base in the Grade 1 classroom. I was met by multiple hugs and high fives as I walked in the door, which reminded me of why I love being with the early elementary years so much. They are so enthusiastic!

My teaching partner taught her lesson on ELA where the students learned about a new word family. They really liked this, it was a fun activity where they had to roll a set of special dice to form the words with the AM word family. Then they colored the picture that matched the word. Great activity for the students that are struggling with their printing, they could still be really successful with the activity and have fun while learning.

After lunch, some of the students went off to the SLP while the other students practiced their spelling words on their personal whiteboards. After they worked on these for a while, they played Go Fish with their number cards with a partner until everyone came back together.

This is when I taught my math lesson. My professional goal today was to focus on giving clear directions and setting up expectations. I had a couple of activities so it was a good goal to practice on. We watched a 2 minute video on subitizing that the students loved. They got to review subitizing of tallies and dice before we started our lesson with Dominos. Each student got a handful of Dominos. They picked one out of the pile and drew the number of dots, wrote down the numbers on each side and created a number sentence with the total number of dots. This allowed the students to work on subitizing the numbers, counting on, and the early stages of addition. Everyone seemed to do a great job with this, I was able to move around the room and help out where I needed. When the students finished their sheet they could pick a partner and play a game together. The game was basically War with Dominos where each partner would choose a Domino from a pile and whoever had the biggest number of dots kept the pair. This was the first time they had played this so it was a little tricky with the rules, but most kids have played War with cards before so once they figured out that concept, they had lots of fun playing.

I was really proud of my lesson today. Not that it was overly complicated, but it was easily adapted to the different skill levels and was great for many different learning styles. The kids got tons of number sense practice and had fun doing it. I will definitely keep this activity in my toolbox for future lessons.

This has semester flown by so fast! Now that I have the last 7 weeks under my belt in the field, I am anxious to move on to the 3 week block in the classroom in March. I can’t wait to see how much the Grade 1s have learned and changed over the next few months. Stay tuned to hear about my first unit planning experience!

This week during pre-internship, our cooperating teacher was away so she had arranged for my teaching partner and I to spend the day with the Grade 1 class next door. I was a little nervous going into the week, unsure of what their class would be like and how they behave during my lesson.

As it turns out, my lesson went great, maybe even my best one yet! I read the book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and taught the Grade 1 class how to make text to self connections through a think aloud. Afterwards, we had sharetime to talk about what connections the kids could make to their own life and then I asked them to draw a picture and write a sentence with the prompt “I felt like Alexander when…”.

The Grade 1s did a great job with this. A couple of students made surface level connections such as “I felt like Alexander when I was sad”. While others were able to think of deep connections to their personal lives when things didn’t go their way. One student shared a heartbreaking story that they felt upset when no one is there for them and drew a very specific picture (and described to me in detail) about how her Mom is always on her cell phone during her dance recitals. Nothing gets past these kids! They are so perceptive at this age.

We visited the school’s music teacher where the Grade 1s excitedly started working on their Christmas Concert songs followed by French class with another teacher where they sang more songs. I’m impressed by how much French these students know already. Their teacher does a good job incorporating songs and games into their short time together.

In the afternoon we spent time with teacher in the Grade 5 Math class and got to pick her brain while her class went on to Music.  I’m glad we experienced that, I learned a lot from her and she turned out to be somewhat of a math guru. I need all the help I can get in that area!

It was a great day of new experiences. I loved being able to compare the two different Grade 1 classes. This age group changes so quickly and soak up knowledge like a sponge. Next week will be our last week in the classroom this semester, I’m looking forward to being back with our class.

Today I had the opportunity to observe in a Grade 2-3 split classroom. That was a really cool experience that I feel fortunate to have had. We were there first thing in the morning where the students engage in 30 minutes of journal writing with a prompt from the teacher. The prompt today was “My favorite room in my house is _____ because…”. After the students spent their time writing, they had the opportunity to share with their friends. I was genuinely surprised by how many kids wanted to share their writing. When does that change? In my university classes when the professor poses a question or asks for input, you can usually hear crickets.

It was fun to hear all the different ideas and justifications from the students. Most revolved around the tv, video games, or where their toys were stored. One student noted that they loved their room because that’s where their bed was, and I couldn’t have related more! There was also one student who had the funniest, most creative response about his bathroom that had a magic toilet and continued on about how that worked and what it did, I’ll let you use your imagination! The various responses really allowed me to see the variation in ability within the split classroom. It was a helpful glimpse into the reality of differentiation and how important it is at that age level.  

After lunch, it was time to teach my lesson on dental health. The students were really focused on the discussion, and again it’s so refreshing to see how all of the students want to be called on in class to offer up answers to questions and tell stories of their own.

When we were creating our anchor chart about healthy and unhealthy things/habits for our teeth, I was put to the test a couple of times. The humour in the elementary grades is so innocent and unintentional. I asked the class what they thought a habit was and I was trying not to giggle as one student thought he knew, it was something bad and maybe his mom had one. I thought it best to move on and just explain that concept instead. Next I had a student suggest that worms should go under the healthy column because some people don’t have enough money for food. Thoughtful response, however, I decided to leave it off our chart anyway.  

My professional goal this week was related to connection with students. Feedback from my cooperating teacher was really positive in this area. I feel like I do a pretty good job of keeping an eye on everyone and making eye contact. The only area that I struggled with was surrounding the projected book I was reading to the class. If I were to use that type of text again, I would try to make sure I could circulate the room while reading.

Later on, the Grade 5 class came in to have Math Learning Buddies with our students. They absolutely loved this and it was fun to see their interaction with the older students. As it turns out, the Grade 5 class has been working on  10 Frames and Tallies that we introduced in the last couple of weeks so it was a perfect time to practice.

Overall, it was a fun day in Grade 1. Their willingness to engage and learn continue to surprise me in the best way possible. I also get such a kick out of their humour and creativity at this age. I can’t wait to see what next week brings.

Happy Halloween!

In class this week we debated the idea of having Halloween activities in the schools. It was interesting to hear all sides of the debate and really understand the motives why people feel strongly for or against celebrations around this holiday.

Although I knew our school supported dressing up after lunch, I was still surprised by the amount of Halloween that was incorporated into our day at school. There was a pumpkin carving contest going on that we could vote on, a costume parade and contest, a Halloween song sing-along, followed by an afternoon of integrated elementary activities.

I was thankful to have my teaching block first thing after the morning routine. The students were really excited for Halloween so I was anxious to see how they would engage with my lesson, however, I was happily surprised that they were on their very best behaviour!

I began my lesson with a short video that they watched intently and followed along with some choral reading to practice the new word pattern. Then I introduced our Ghost Spelling activity. The kids thought this was an amazing, magical thing and even the students that don’t love to practice their printing intently worked on this activity. I had an early finisher who I worked with to sound out the words until our time was up. It was the cutest thing, he was so proud when he successfully read all of this words.  

After lunch during the integration activities I took a turn leading BINGO for the kids and handing out prizes. We had students from K-6 so it was fun to see the variation and interaction between them all.

We finished the day with a class group photo where all our students could show off their costumes. It was seriously so much fun and the most exhausted I’ve been all week. I’m still so impressed by the Grade 1 class working so hard in spite of all their excitement, and can’t help but think: Can’t every day be Halloween?

This week I taught my first math lesson. Math has never really been my strong suit so I was admittedly a little nervous to teach this subject. That’s why I knew that I needed to get one of these lessons under my belt. Pre-internship seemed like the best time to try while I had my cooperating teacher and teaching partner on standby.

My professional development goal this week was to plan a lesson that had a strong Set, Development and Closure. I decided to use the lesson plan that I had presented in my night class on Tuesday. After rotating through with small groups and teaching it 5 times, I felt pretty good about it. It was time to see if it would go over just as well in Grade 1.

To begin my lesson, I presented a problem which had the students hooked right away and thrilled to help me solve it. For the development, I was pumped to show the class the manipulatives I brought in for them to try out while practicing the new math concept. They included toy cars, gems, plastic spiders, animals and dinosaurs. The students were engaged again and wanting to play. They really enjoyed the activity although they were a little louder and more rambunctious than expected. I followed up their practice time with an exit ticket to close, which proved to me that the students all understood what I had taught them. What more could I ask for?

In hindsight, I should have planned for more time to play with the toys so that they got it out of their system before trying to get them to practice. My math professor suggested allowing them time to play beforehand, however, if I were to teach this lesson again I would explain to the class that they would have time to play after we practiced, to give me a little more control.

Overall, I’m really happy with how it turned out. Although, as I should have guessed, teaching a lesson to groups of six 20 -year-olds in university is slightly different than teaching to a class of twenty 6-year-olds in Grade 1! 

Today felt like a whirlwind. The day started off by having a meeting with the school’s principal to review expectations and professionalism within the school. This was a great opportunity to meet the other pre-interns within the school and make a connection with the principal. She was welcoming and supportive, reminding us that we’re not ‘just interns’ but educators within the school community. We were encouraged to explore the school and all it has to offer. She also suggested we reach out to teachers of other grades to take the opportunity to experience as many grade levels and teaching philosophies as we can. I left this meeting feeling pumped up and ready to take on the day.

After the students came inside from recess it was time for my partner and I to co-teach our health lesson. We read a story about ways to be kind and brainstormed about how to be a good friend. Then we talked about how it feels when our others aren’t kind to us. The kids were very excited and engaged for most of the lesson, however even our cooperating teacher agreed that the kids tend to get a little “squirrely” after about 20 minutes. A consideration I had before starting that lesson was to have the students move from their desks to the mats midway through, but from what I learned last week, I thought it might take too long. In hindsight, it might be worth trying out for next week! And just like that, it was lunch followed by the hustle and bustle of the highly anticipated field trip to the art gallery.

Let me tell you, anyone that suggests a field trip is an easy day for teachers, has never been on a bus with 50 six year olds! On the way to the art gallery, 20 minutes away by bus, we had a student crying because they missed their mom, one crying because they missed their brother and one sleeping. We were bound to have an unpredictable afternoon.

In all honesty, the art gallery was a fantastic field trip. I would highly recommend it to other educators. They do a really good job of engaging the students and relating the content to their lives. There were many hands on activities planned throughout the gallery tour which the students loved. The leaders were enthusiastic and engaging, and open to a millions questions. That being said, we have to remember that in Grade 1, there are more important things than art, and those things include, missing recess, snack time, and going outside.

I’ve learned that everything in Grade 1 is over the top and it shouldn’t be any other way. I think we covered all of the emotions and had a fun-filled, exhausting day. I can’t wait to see what adventures next week brings.

I didn’t sleep last night in anticipation for my first day in Grade 1. I woke up early and packed my lunch and rushed to school to meet my new cooperating teacher. I loved getting the chance to poke around in her classroom and see all of the thoughtful tools she has implemented to make sure the day runs smoothly. From the number system students hold up when they need to go the washroom or get a drink of water, to the visual attendance board that they’ve learned to use as they come and go from class. It’s clear how important routines are in the classroom for management but also for saving valuable time.

It was fun to roam around and meet all the neighboring teachers and staff, but I was most excited to meet all the firsties when the bell finally rang. As they charged in excitedly and hung up their coats and backpacks, we had lots of side glances, waves, and fingers pointed as they got ready to start the day. After a chaotic fire drill, we settled into the morning routine and had the opportunity to observe while the students loved getting to tell Miss Philip and Miss S all the ins and outs along the way.

Our introductory lesson was scheduled for the afternoon.  After hearing from our cooperating teacher the week before that we only had 15-20 minutes to teach, I was a little concerned. We needed to learn our students’ names, make connections, and try to find out who we would be teaching over the next 7 weeks. What could we possibly do in so little time? So my teaching partner and I met to brainstorm some ideas. We planned and revised and planned again to find an activity that we thought would be simple enough to fit into that time frame.

When it came time to teach our lesson, we realized that there was a miscommunication. Our cooperating teacher had given us each 15-20 minutes! Oh, the things we could have planned! But we decided to just go for it and adjust as we needed and we could always allow more questions if we had to fill time. Of course, like any good teacher, Mrs. F had other things planned if we came up short.

Am I ever glad it happened that way! As it turns out, a 15 minute lesson in Grade 1 can easily span over 30+ minutes. By the time you gain their attention, get them all sitting in the appropriate spot, explain everything from top to bottom and bottom to top you’ve lost their attention again!

Just when I began to wonder if I was the worst teacher ever, I got my first hug and thank you for a fun day. It was then that I realized, there’s no rush in Grade 1. The pace is much different from that of upper elementary and middle school where I’m used to being. Almost everything is new and there are teaching moments built in throughout every experience. I’ve learned that I need to slow down and allow for that learning to happen.