My second week of practicum was full of creative instructional lessons, some “interesting” student behaviour, and many learning moments. I was fortunate enough to experience a school assembly that introduced the Terry Fox Run to our students, and I even got to participate in my first Meet the Teacher Night! Let’s go through my week moment by moment.

My first takeaway from my week is just how creative my associate teacher is with his lessons. He is able to take a concept and introduce it in a number of ways to ensure that every student understands and succeeds, while also having fun. An example of this is how we was able to integrate Math, Language, and Religion into one lesson. First, he taught the students how to find a reading in the Bible by looking up the book, chapter, and verse. Next, the students were to read two parables, each discussing the topic of loss (Luke 15: 1-10). This led to a discussion about the meaning of the parable and the lesson we can draw from it. Following this discussion, students answered math questions that combined the religious parables with our fraction unit.

Finally, to integrate it into our Langauge lesson, students used chrome books to write a story about their own experiences of “loss”. Talk about an integrated and well-structured lesson!

Later in the week, my associate teacher created Language stations that revolved around stories from my favourite author: Dr. Seuss! He formed 6 groups of 4 students and had them read together through a different Dr. Seuss book. At the conclusion of the book, students were given a handout to fill out which had them practicing their narrative writing skills by describing the beginning, middle, and end of the story. As with all Seuss books, there are important (and genius) underlying messages that the students had to discover. Lastly, to tie the lesson into Religion, the students had to choose a character and identify whether they exhibited a Catholic Graduate Expectation or not. Pretty comprehensive lesson if you ask me!

This week also marked my first time teaching a lesson while using the full functionality of a SMART Board! The students seemed to be engaged and remain interested in the topic throughout the duration of my lesson. The SMART Board allowed for students to participate in the lesson, and in all honesty, it forced me to make my teaching more student-centred in that they were able to write on the board and teach their peers. The extra student engagement even allowed me to go deeper into equivalent fractions, a concept that we were exploring for the first time, than expected.

Another neat little tidbit I learned from my other associate teacher is that the Ottawa Catholic School Board released a series of “Language wheels” that outlined the variations among each grade level. Board members found that with there being so many different types of writing that needs to be covered each year, teachers were focusing on some more than other. In theory, this is fine; however, when teachers year after year are focusing on the same types, then students find the others more difficult later in their educational careers. Therefore, these wheels were developed to outline which types of writing should be focused on (In-Depth Study) and which should be reviewed (Light Study) for each grade. Here is an example of the wheel and how writing should be varied between Grade 4 and Grade 5:

 

Meet the teacher night was a great experience, especially as a Teacher Candidate. These are the types of events that you aren’t taught about in school and are usually left to figure it out on your own. I loved getting to see how teachers prepared their rooms throughout the week in anticipation of the parents. With our school being more in the urban setting, teachers were unsure of how many parents would actually attend. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a crowd of parents and students join us for our welcome barbecue and later wandering the halls of our school. It is definitely an interesting thing to meet the parents of your students. It allows you to gain a holistic idea of the student, seeing where they came from and who they go home to. It’s almost like meeting the students’ “other parents”.

You might have noticed the little numbers on the books above. These books are part of the PM Benchmark system that my school uses to determine student reading level and comprehension. It is a great system that has students to read aloud to a teacher and answer some recall questions about the story. I have continued to complete these assessments throughout my Wednesday visits to the school and its a great way to develop a deeper understanding of the student’s Language ability.

Another great moment from the week was when Mrs. Pickett came into our Grade 5/6 split class with her keyboard and amazing vocals. The students sang along to “Open The Eyes Of My Heart”, which had both English and French sections. It was great to see just how engaged the students were, and how memorized they were with the keyboard. I look forward to seeing our students have more music classes in the weeks to come!