Introduction
For my third year field experience, I will be attending Glen Elm School in Regina, Saskatchewan every Wednesday for eight consecutive weeks. During my time at the school, I will be joining a grade 7/8 class and practise teaching, classroom management, and building relationships with students. I will be teaching a one hour lesson each day I visit the school (with acceptation to the first day which will just be an introduction activity), which I plan on teaching Physical Education, Art Eduction, Treaty Education, Social Studies, and English Education.
First Day in the Classroom
My first day in classroom was quite the experience. It with my partner and I going to the school and meeting our co operating teacher before school began. She was very welcoming and excited to have us in the school, and explained the dynamic of her classroom. The way the school works is that there are two 7/8 classes, on is for students who are at grade level, and the other, the one I will be teaching in, is for students who have varying learning abilities and may need some extra assistance. Our co operating teacher explained that this might be a difficult for us as many of our lessons will have to be modified to lower grade levels and include many adaptive dimension, but we were ready to take on the challenge.
When the bell rang for school to begin, we got our first meeting with the students we would be teaching for the next two months. the stunts were very curious and eager to meet the two new teacher in the room, so we began the day with an introduction activity. Our activity was a slideshow where the students had to guess information about my partner and I, such as: Who has a dog? Where did we grow up? What sport and hobbies do we have? After we gave the students so information about us, we had them answer the same questions about themselves so we could learn about who are learners are.
For the rest of the day we mostly just spectated the class and watched how the teacher taught them and was strategies she used. We watched how the students learned in math by working in groups, and how they learned social studies by using lots of visuals. A highlight of our day was when part of the Regina Symphony came to play their instruments for the entire school. It was amazing to watch just how much each student enjoyed the music.
Our day ended by have a meeting with our cooperating teacher and planning our lessons for our next day in the school. We decided to teach Physical Education because that was the students favourite subject. After that we talked for a while then departed to begin planning our lesson for next week.
Second Day in the Classroom
For my second week in the classroom, I found myself both nervous and excited because today was the day I would teach my first lesson. It helped to know I wouldn’t be done however, as my partner would be teaching the lesson with me. Since the students loved Physical Education, we decided that was the subject we should teach first. Our lesson involved practising offensive and defensive strategies by playing a game of Capture the Beanbag which involved students trying to take beanbags from their opponents zone and bring them back to their own zone without being tagged. It didn’t go quite as planned. I don’t think the students had as much experience playing these types of games as we had thought and it was a bit hectic. We took this experience as a learning curves and even though we didn’t feel our lesson was successful, we gained a lot of take aways to how to make our lessons more meaningful next time.
The rest of the day went fairly smooth. My partner and I spectated as well as helped students as they learned math and social studies and even had the chance to go outside with them for recess and watch them play. Apparently they love the game ‘bumper cars’ and played it for the full 15 minutes, Our day ended by having a post conference meeting with out cooperating teaching and discussing how our lesson went and how we can make our lesson better in the future. After that we parted ways until next week.
Fourth Day in the classroom
October 30th, 2019 was my fourth week in the classroom was definitely the most interesting. Our Cooperating teacher was taking a vacation so we had a substitute instead, The teacher assistant was also unable to come to school that day, and my partner was very sick so she also wasn’t able to make it to class that day. So instead of four adults in the room, it was just me and the substitute. The day began pretty good, the students had their morning snack then completed their math assignments. After math I accompanied the students to French, since it was so close to Halloween the students had a chill day and watched the movie Coco. After French it was my turn to teach. I planned to teach a day of the dead lesson with the studnets, where we learned about why it is celebrated and the different types of art that is on display for the holiday, then after they completed a visual arts assignment where each student coloured a bone and at the end we put it together to create a skeleton. The students really liked this activity which allowed them to participate in a fun colouring activity while also creating something amazing as a class.
Sixth Day in the Classroom
For my sixth week in the classroom I decided to teach a mathematics lesson. The students were just beginning to learn multiplication so my cooperating teacher asked to me to try and teach some new strategies that the students could use to make multiplication easier for them. I decided to teach the base – 10 multiplication strategy which involved breaking down equations to easier numbers to multiply. I used a lot of new ideas for this lesson which included giving students a laminated sheet to practise on, and using an exit slip for a summative assessment. The students really seemed to enjoy the lesson and were excited to learn a starter that made multiplication easier. A few students even told me after the lesson that they loved it which really made my day. Almost immediately after my lesson was complete my partner began to teach her math lesson, since our cooperating teacher asked us both to tech mathematics. The students didn’t react as positively to her lesson as they did to my lesson, which I feel was a result of having to much mathematics and not enough time in between for a break. I felt bad for my partner having to teach in an environment like that, but I think it taught us both a lesson about giving our students breaks between lessons and not having to much of one subject in a day.