Week three was very educational! Our placement teacher is a fantastic teacher!
This week we got to observe the students and how they participated in partners. Our placement teacher told us that she enjoys letting them work in groups but only when it’s not for an assessment. We found some desk partner combos worked well and some didn’t work at all. Some people would just copy from the other person in their group which is not the way partners are supposed to work. Our placement teacher is trying to emphasize the importance of contributing to a group and working together. The groups that worked well together were very on task and both contributing which was awesome teamwork. There are two students in the class that need quite a bit more assistance than the others. One student is not at a grade 5 level and one has very high anxiety. Our teacher works very hard to make sure these students can do the work she is assigning and assists them more than the other students. She provides scribing for one student in the class. Our placement teacher is willing to teach her students in the best way she learns. She would like to gain more knowledge about mental health and effective ways to deal with students who are affected. She believes this education would be useful for some of the students. Our placement teacher truly wants the best for all of her students. Our placement teacher believes it is important to connect the students to real experiences for them to understand they are being taught in the classroom. For example, they a reading a novel right now about the ghosts at the government house, so on Halloween they are going for a tour of the government house in Regina. They will be able to connect what they read and get their imagination going a bit about the ghosts. I think this is a great way to wrap up a novel study. I also think it is super awesome that the students will get a fun reward for all their hard work throughout the novel study. When students are looking forward to a field trip after the novel would keep them engaged in the novel. When the students can apply what they learnt they willing to remember the content more clearly. Next week is going to be a fantastic field trip with the grade 5 class! I can’t wait! ~Karlee
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Another great day at my field experience! Today we got to help out in the Kindergarten classroom as well as in the grade 5 classroom. We got to experience many new things we were not expecting!
The teacher and support staff at the school are very welcoming and friendly! The teachers are wanting us to get the best experience in a school setting as possible. Many people who come into the school throughout the week to help students succeed. Support staff to help students with speech, attitudes, behaviour and any other things that hold back students from doing their best. Our placement teacher uses most of these support staff for students in her classroom, but it just depends on the students how much you utilize this support. It is awesome they have so many people to help support the students who need extra support in the school! I think the school has a very strong connection to their community. The school has its parish right across the street, so they are very closely connected to the church. Our placement teacher told us they have worships every Wednesday. They have been collecting funds for father because he doesn’t take a wage from the school. Father attends all assemblies and any other important events happening at the school. The school and church are closely connected. Also, in grade 5, they had one of the parents of a student come in to do a presentation to the kids about Elections Canada because they are learning about the elections in Social Studies. This was a super great way to connect the learning done in class to reality. Another community connection would be the grade 5 class preforming their Thriller dance somewhere in the community. I mentioned this last week but this is a fantastic way to connect the students to their community. We got to meet the Kindergarten class and their grandparents today! The students brought ingredients to make vegetable soup and fruit salad for their grandparents. The students sang some songs and enjoyed the delicious food they made in class with their grandparents at the end of the day. The Kindergarten teacher told us she does this every year because she thinks it is important for the grandparents to be recognized for the upbringing of the child too. This was a great experience for the children because it gives them a chance to show their grandparents their classroom and the things they have learned so far in Kindergarten. This school is a happy, fun, exciting place for students to learn. The school environment and the community around them is a positive place. It is import to have positive, and enthusiastic people in a school to make the school experience the best it can be. I think the students at this school have a great school environment and a pretty fantastic group of people education them! ~Karlee Today was fabulous! I was in the grade 5 class at a Catholic school in Regina. We were welcomed by the Vice Principal who showed us to the grade 5 classroom. The classroom was in a portable at the far end of the school.
In the classroom, I noticed many things! The first thing I noticed was there is not much shelving in the classroom. There were a few tubs of teaching supplies on the ground, two bookshelves, and a shelf for extra supplies. The desks were grouped in pairs. There were not many options for flexible setting, but there was a standing desk, a bean bag chair, and some mats to put anywhere on the floor. There was also a big long table for group work. One thing I thought was the most unusual was that there were no analog clocks in the classrooms; all the clocks were digital in this school. We found this unusual because they still learn how to tell the time in grade 5, but do not have a clock to relate their lessons to in their classroom. In the class, there were many different learning types. Our placement teacher had her seating plan set up to benefits the kids. The students that needed a little bit of extra help with instructions she put with more mature students who were willing to give up some of their work time to help their partner. In the grade 5 class, there was a wide range of maturity levels. Some students were very mature and some students were not, but they are working on their maturity. Our placement teacher told us at the end of the day that she has a very wide range of skill levels in her class, which we noticed as well. At the school, it is a tradition that every year the grade 5 class learns the Thriller dance by Michael Jackson as part of their arts education class. Once they have the dance down pat, the students go out into the community to perform a flash mob in a community center. I think this is a super great idea because it gets the students looking forward to an end result and is also connecting them with their community. We got to watch them practice for their public performance, and they were very impressive. There were a few boys in the front row that had done lots of practice at home. You could tell the students who were really willing to participate and practice. I had a fantastic day, and I can’t wait to go back next week! ~Karlee |
AuthorWeekly posts about my field experiences in the classroom. ArchivesPictures of the Classroom
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