Final day.....

Well it has finally come and these are my last few days at St. Matthew School. It has been a great experience that I will always be able to look back on. I will remember not only the lessons I learned but also the co-workers and friends I have gained! These next few days will be very fun and I will be able to just relax and soak up the last few days.


Onto the next challenge....getting a job!!!

Parent Teacher interviews tomorrow

Alright well tomorrow I am participating in parent teacher interviews. I am looking forward to this but at the same time don't know what to expect. I'm sure it will be a fairly laid back process but who knows. I am actually going to be able to conduct 4 interviews tomorrow!

Block Finished

Alright so my 3 week block is all complete now. It was definitely more stressful then i thought it would be. A lot was going on and it always seemed that I was rushing and always had something to finish. I think the projects that I was trying to complete weren't quite organized well enough. I think i need to do these projects in steps rather then giving them the entire project at once. I guess that is something that i have learned this semester. I can see the growth in my own teaching techniques and my interactions with the students. It is really cool to see where I started and what I'm becoming in these few short months! December is here and it is the final stretch, with a lot of field trips and wind up things planned there isn't much more time in my internship.

Structure

So I found out today, without any structure the students go absolutly CRAZY! I started a letter writing project and the student couldn't seem to get started on it. I had to keep on them to make sure they kept going. It is near the end of the day and i think this has something to do with it. I know that i get excited for the end of the day too. haha

3 week block

3 week block started today with a full morning of prep haha. I am very excited to start my language arts unit focusing on community and family. It has been a unit i have been planning for about the past week and a bit. Projects include aboriginal story telling, family structures, action project, and many more. I began reading 'The Outsiders' today in class. Students seem very interested in it!


Until another time!

P.s. Math test tomorrow!

Dancing like a fool

Okay so dancing began last week and I was not really looking forward to how my students were going to act towards it. However after a little groaning and such the students love it! I started with the electric slide the first day and then we did the cupid shuffle. The cupid shuffle is a line dance that is to the tune of a hip hop song. It was a song that many of the students already knew so it was an easy sell. The students are now designing their own line dances and they will record, and edit them. Many of the students have asked if they can bring costumes and such, it is becoming VERY exciting! For a set to this lesson I made my own line dance that they watched before they began creating their own, I think it was more fun for myself. ha

math, math, math

Well I found the subject that I struggle with the most. Started teaching math a little while ago and I am noticing that i seem to confuse myself quite a bit. haha

After talking to my co-op he is helping me through this unit. He has gotten me to focus on a single lesson at a time and getting me to gather my thoughts before i start teaching. It has helped a lot to start writing down what examples i am going to go through ....who knew!

Update coming soon!

Started Religion Today.

Students are learning about the fruits of the spirit. They were responsible to connect at least 4 fruits of the spirit to the presentation that we just saw at St. Pius. The speaker was Cory Johnson. He was an awesome inspirational speaker that was able to connect to the kids using comedy as well as real life experiences. The students were very well behaved and seemed to gain a lot from his presentation.

Cant wait to read what the students had to say!

Changing a thing or two

My faculty adviser came on Tuesday to watch one of my lessons and wow was it ever chaotic. The way that i organized the class made a lot more work for myself. I was not very happy with how the lesson went. The students were all over the place and making a mess with the experiment that i had planned. Overall i did not feel so great about the lesson after.
The next day i was able to teach the lesson again to the other class. I decided to change a few things about the lesson and how it was set up. One of the big things that i changed was how i instructed the students. I went over the entire experiment with the class and answer any questions they had before we started. That made a HUGE difference in how the lesson went. After this attempt at the lesson i was very happy with how it went and was really excited to see how big of a difference it makes to change even the tiniest thing.
My co-op told me one time that usually if a class is bad during a lesson it is because of your directions and not the students. This was the case in my lesson and i was directly able to see that on Wednesday!

Started Math!

Started math today and it went awesome! We had a lesson on proportional reasoning. As a class we were able to understand the concept and also use this knowledge first hand! We went outside and measure the height of our shadows and the height of ourselves. Using this proportion students were able to calculate the height if they were taller or short. Ex.

Height of shadow/ Height of person

250/160= ?/200

They were then able to figure out what height their shadow was if they were 200cm tall.

SICK...

To be sick, or not to be sick…. Well today I found out there is a lot more work to preparing for a sub then actually being there. I can see why many teachers choose to come to school while sick. I was able to email my lesson plan to my co-op the night before. He ran my lesson that day however the next day I talked to him, he told me that it was a little hard to follow. This definitely makes sense! I wrote the lesson thinking that I was going to teach it and didn’t think of the little details that I just had in my head of what I was going to do. I really need to focus on this detail work and create my sub lesson plans more accurately and precisely. I would expect the same if I start to substitute next year!

Treaty Four

Today we went out to fort quapelle and were involved in some different aboriginal traditions. We learned about beading, traditional dancing, as well as had a brief session on Hide Tanning and Meat Drying. The entire day was a blast and I believe the students got a lot out of this experience. During one of the dances were able to witness a ceremony. One of the eagle feathers from one of the dancers fell on the ground. He instantly stopped dancing and protected this feather. An elder came out and performed a ceremony with tobacco and then picked it up and said a prayer/blessing to all 4 directions, N,E,S,W. It was very interesting to see how much these dances and traditions still meant to these aboriginal people. It wasn't just a performance, it was a cultural tradition with great importance!

The substitute was in again today. I was responsible to start the morning routines off. Bell work involved writing about a dead person you always wanted to meet, and what question you would ask them. A lot of people wrote Michael Jackson, which is very cool! It shows how much even this generation knew about him. He truly was an inspiration and icon for many generations! The class seemed like they were having a great time doing this bell work, so much so that they were getting a little too loud. I was able to calm them down but review what the procedure is for bell work. Overall it is going very well this morning so far!

Substitute Teacher

My co-op was sick today so a substitute came into the classroom and lead the class through some subjects in the afternoon. I was able to see how substitutes must demand respect from the students right away. It was crazy to see how the students reacted when the routines were changed even just a little.

My Science Lesson today was very awesome! I was able to wing it a little more, which i really like. Students seemed to get the point of the lesson right away after a quick demonstration.

Teaching a different Class

In science I am teaching two science classes, my class, as well as the grade 7/8 class. The first time i taught the grade 7/8 class i was very happy with the lesson and the enthusiasm that the students had. The first time i had my class for science it almost seemed like a struggle to get them to pay attention and weren't nearly as engaged. I have a few theories about this however it also was a Friday afternoon so this could have had something to do with it. After a few more times teaching i will be able to gauge whether it is the change of atmosphere/teacher or weather is it something totally different.

First day of teaching...alone

So today I was able to have the class by themselves. Wow that was definitely different! I finally was able to see what it would be like by myself in the classroom. We played some trivial pursuit and music ball and for the most part the class was very good. A few times I was able to use some of the procedures that my co-op enforces and I can see that they can become very vital in classroom management. Overall the first two days of class have been very good, still learning the names of the students but that will come I’m sure! My Science unit plan is coming along as well and am very excited for many of the activities!

First Day back

Well, it's finally the first day of internship! Super excited to finally get a chance to use all of the skills i have been taught throughout the years at the U or R. I can now see that the end of my school career is coming up very quickly! This Year should be one to remember!