This week’s class time was definitely lots of fun. To start, we had a person come in from the Regina public school board teaching the kids about the effects of winter. more specifically on how animals change, adapt and live when it’s so cold out. He came with a large amount of Taxidermyed animals and went through them one at a time explaining things like hibernation, camouflage, and adaptations that the animals have made to survive. Of course, all that the kids wanted to do was to touch the animals. But from my own experience, I had an identical presentation when I was a kid. and many of the facts that I know today were because of that presentation so I feel the children did learn a lot even if they were a bit distracted
After the presentation, the class was also treated to another special surprise. Mrs. P the teacher I am shadowing as well as a few other teachers received a grant which allowed them to pick out new books for their classroom. there were roughly 100 new books for the children to read. One of which I read to a small group of students, the story was about a crayon which was labeled as “red” but was actually blue on the inside. a very nice book in clear resemblance to LGBTQ2+ people.
This week we were to focus on “Curriculum & Instruction.” for my class, most of the things being taught are the basics such as reading, writing, and math. Writing is mostly taught in 2 ways in the class; Mrs P starts off with the new sound or letter that the kids will be focusing on (such as the sounds that “Th” “Ee” makes) she goes over this on a projector while all the students follow along as she goes through a song that makes use of the letter or sound they are learning. once that is finished they go to their tables and start practicing writing it in their books. the books are filled with simple activities that give different examples of when the letter/sound is used.
Aside from letters and writing, there is math. most of the math is basic counting and patterns (such as 2,4,6- 5,10,15,20 etc) and also teaching them about the hundreds, tens and one’s place and how they work. Again just like writing Mrs. P goes through how to do everything they are covering for that class then lets the students attempt them in their book. Of course, many students don’t fully understand so that’s where myself and Mr.s P would focus in on the students who were struggling the most to try and help them
I feel like most of the children understand the importance of what they are learning especially when it comes to counting as I see many of them counting things when they are playing such as rocks and other kids that are playing a game.
It was an awesome week and can’t wait for the next