Field Blog 1

Today October 9th, 2018 was my first day of the Field Experience part of ECS and I personally thought that going back into an Elementary school and the grade2/3 class room that I was put in brought back a familiar feeling and made me feel happy. The learners are the grade 2/3. I got to spend some time with some of the kids at recess before school started. Some of them were willing to talk where others weren’t because I was not known to them. The class I was in was pretty similar to what I can remember from my grade 2-3 years of Elementary school.

The class room environment was so bright and colorful, it had many pictures on the wall and drawings or work that the kids had done. It had posters on the all with words for them to learn and numbers to help them count, this reminded me of being back in my Elementary school. Some thing they did different was the morning announcements and Oh Canada. The kids doing announcements are told acknowledge the First Nations people of Canada and remind everyone that we are all treaty people as well. As for Oh Canada is had a type of First Nations sound to it, sounded like the type of music you would hear at one of their Powwows.

My co-op teacher I am with well I am doing my Field Experience uses this thing called “The Daily 5”. The daily 5 includes doing a bunch of activities to help get kids to write different words, increase retention and comprehension, expand vocabulary, and learning to spell. They have 6 activities all together and one is switched out, so they can rotate through all 6 with each one taking 15 minutes each and they are 1. Work on writing 2. Read to self 3. Word work 4. Read to someone 5. Teacher table and 6. Listen to reading. This is different from what I did because I only ever did clock buddies, where as I was I could have done something like this is seems like the kids enjoyed it and had fun doing these things. As the children were doing their daily 5 I walked around and asked many of them what they were writing or reading about. Many of them were open to have a conversation like the one little girl I talked to her was writing about her favourite mythical creature which was a Fairy horse and she told me she liked them because they are just horse with horns, I talked to her and her friend for about 5 minutes about their love for fairy horses. The children would even ask for help and many of them asked me if they could read their book to me. For their journals my coop teacher also has a wall with Journal Prompts in case the children do not know what to write about and example of this would be “What do you like better soda or juice?”

They are also given a booklet of words in case they do not know how to spell a word. As for the word work they are given a number of words each day to write down in their booklets today there were 12 words and they were Halloween themed. They each then get to write the words all in a different way. For example, one of the ways they could write them is called “Magic Words” what this is they take a white crayon write out the word and then color over it with a marker until it appears, I can say that I never had something like this in my Elementary school and I wish I did because it makes learning more fun. They also have a home reading program which is the same as what I did in school where you take home a book of your reading level and need to read it for the next day. The class room just made me feel a sense of nostalgia and I could not believe how colorful it was. It was something I never got to experience in my grade 2 or 3 class room.

The schooling isn’t so different from mine as far as I can remember just small things such as the “Daily 5” or in the morning after the students get their agendas signed they can go sit and read or talk with friend in the “Connection Corner” which seemed to make the kids happy, which I only remember ever going into class getting my agenda signed and getting straight to work.