My First Day in the Classroom
Tuesday, October 9th 2018, would be my first day of eight, attending a school to observe a classroom. I was assigned to observe a grade four class at Ruth M Buck school in the afternoons.
When I received my assigned school and class, I was nervous. It would be my first time attending an elementary school classroom since I had been in one, and I have never worked with children before in such a setting. I was very nervous because I was unsure if the children would like me since I was a bit unexperienced in this grade range. When I arrived at the school I waited for my co operating teacher at the front office. Since I arrived during recess, my coop was able to give me a quick tour of the school while she explained her class and the lesson she planned on teaching this afternoon. When recess finished I met the students that I would be working with over the next eight weeks. They appeared to be a great group of kids who gave me a friendly greeting.
The class began with the teacher reading a short story. The story was about a girl coming to Canada from India, and talked about her struggles to make friends and adjust. The students then wrote a summary of the story and a response to how she might have felt. I thought this was a very good exercise for the students to complete as the scenario is very common because we live in such a diverse country. A girl in the class was even able to relate to it because her parents came from India. After this, the class went to the school library to pick out some books. I was introduced to the librarian and she explained to me what she planned for the kids to do. She planned to have the students take out thee books; a halloween book, a fiction book, and the third was any book the students wanted. I liked how the librarian guided the students in their book selections while also giving them a large range of options. When the students had their books selected, they checked them out, then sat down at a table and began to read them. When library was finished it was time for recess.
After recess the students began a math assignment. I walked around the room and some students work. Since it was my first day, I was a bit sceptical as to whether the teacher would want me to be helping the students yet, so I mostly walked around and watched. After math the students filled out their agendas and began to get ready to leave. When their agendas had been filled out and they had all their things to take home, they lined up a the door and waited for dismissal. When the students left I had a brief discussion with my teacher on next weeks lessons and then walked me to the exit doors.
One Month into my Field Experience
Tuesday October 6th was my fifth day going to Ruth M. Buck school to observe a grade four class for my field experience. I choose to focus on this blog post because it was about a month in and a little over halfway through my field experience.
When arriving at the school, I was no longer nervous, but excited to go and see the students again. I had grown familiar with some of the staff and students and instead of waiting at the office, I was aloud to just go in and go right to my assigned classroom. Today in my classroom we began with visual arts. The teacher read a story about children in residential schools, and then asked the children to write or draw what they imagined as she was reading the story. I really liked this exercise because it educated students on the hardships of residential schools while also inviting them to use their imaginations and visual their thoughts. While the students were doing this I decided to walk around the room and watch them as they worked while also trying to get involved by helping them or asking what they were writing or drawing. I have been trying to really be apart of the classroom more as I progress through this field experience, so when I can I prefer to walk around the room helping children rather then observing from the back. We did this exercise all the way to recess. At recess I sat with a student who stayed inside to work on her reading. The student has some trouble reading and writing, but she uses an application on a school iPad to help her. The app reads her a book of her choosing, then she reads it herself and answers questions about the book. I thought this app was great and really helped the student. After recess was music. Today in music the teacher was showing the students the movie Marry Poppinsto give the students some inspiration for songs to sing. This was a great learning experience for me too as I have never seen the movie. We watched this movie until the end of the day. After the students went home I stayed behind to talk my cooperating teacher on how I have been doing in this field experience so far. She said she had no complaints and liked that I was trying to be apart of the classroom more and helping the students.
Last Day of my Field Experience
My last day of my field experience was Tuesday, November 27th. For me this was a really sad day. I was really going to miss the going to the school every Tuesday and seeing the students.
The day began with the class going to the library and having health class with the librarian. She decided to teach a lesson today on mindfulness and mindful actions. She would give the students scenarios that they may encounter, and then ask if they were mindful or unmindful. Example: You choose to ignore a friend that is trying to talking to you. Mindful or Unmindful? She worked through the first few scenarios with the students until they got the hang of it, then she handed out a sheet of paper with even more scenarios so that they could work through them themselves. She asked me if I could sit with a student who had some trouble reading and staying focused. We worked through the questions together and I was able to really help him. After health we went to music, the students were preparing for their upcoming holiday concert and were practising for the songs that they would be preforming. The song was about bells and selected students would play bells while some would sing the lyrics. It was impressive to see the students begin to play instruments at such a young age. After music was recess. After recess we did some work with the school laptops. The students were assigned to find three pictures of anything they liked on google, and then copy and paste them into a word document. I liked this because it was simple, yet helped students get familiar with computers. I was really able to help while doing this assignment, since most students were a bit confused with the instructions or had troubles with their computers, and the teacher was busy helping students with their log ins, I was constantly running around the class and must have helped at least every student once. It felt really good to be able to help the students and really made me feel apart of the class.
After the computer assignment it was home time for the students. Before they left they presented me with a homemade card and gave me a few hugs and high fives while they said their goodbyes. I’m really happy they enjoyed having me in their classroom.
After the students had left I had a discussion with my cooperating teacher on my progress throughout this experience. She was very pleased with the work I had achieved and had nothing negative to say. I was able to make arrangements to attend my classes upcoming holiday concert, then thanked the teacher and said goodbye.
Personal Growth
Over the course of this semester, I had the opportunity to partake in a field experience going to Ruth M. Buck school every Tuesday to observe a grade four classroom. This experience really helped me to grow as a teacher in many ways.
One of the biggest ways in which I have grown has been my confidence. When I first found out I would be observing a grade four class I was very nervous. I was unsure if the students at that age would like me, and I was very unexperienced with working with students that young. I decided to reach out to a close teacher friend in the education program currently working on her internship in a similar age group, with hopes to get some tips. She suggested asking about their interests, as well as just being as helpful as possible. When I arrived at the school I was still very nervous to meet and be working with the students. I found myself mostly observing from the back on the first day, however that soon changed. Each time going to the school, I began to feel more and more comfortable in my class and began walking around the room as much as possible helping out the students and watching them work. Im really happy my confidence was something I was able to improve on over this course as it was one of the main things I wanted to work on.
Another point of growth I noted over this course was my gain knowledge and experience. Since I would be attending the school eight different times, I talked to my cooperating teacher about exploring some other grades to widen my experience. I was able to briefly work with classes grade 3, 4, and 5, and I was also able to observe a grade 7 band class. I also observed a grade 8 health and gym class. While observing all of these classes I made sure to note the lessons and tactics I liked and may use myself someday. Im very thankful to Ruth M. Buck school and cooperating teacher for giving me the opportunities to observe these grades.