Holy moly! Today is the last day of March Break. I have just spent a wonderful week catching up on rest, enjoying ever-warming weather, celebrating my birthday :) and lastly, preparing for the final three weeks of my Practicum placement at General Vanier Public School. I still cannot believe the last entry I wrote was in December, over three months ago! However, if you were wondering just how busy life can get for a teacher candidate, I think the lapse in time between then and now is a pretty good indication. We are truly in the thick of things now. The responsibility for planning and teaching is almost fully on the teacher candidates, and so my life has been revolving around every kind of preparation imaginable. Preparing by planning units, preparing by creating lesson plans, preparing by gathering materials, preparing by setting and tracking personal and professional goals, preparing for observations, and repeat. The work is intense, and the preparations are vital. But I love it. I am one hundred percent sure that this is where I should be. Over the last five weeks, I have enjoyed more and more responsibility within my Grade 1 classroom, as well as within the greater school community. I planned and delivered a four week Science unit all about Materials, Objects and Everyday Structures, which I am incredibly proud of. The students learned the differences between materials, objects and structures, how to describe objects and materials using their senses, and what the best materials would be to use to build specific things, based on their need. These concepts were explored actively, in one instance using the Three Little Pigs as a method to connect information they arleady knew with new material. We designed, built and tested the Three Little Pig's building materials (straw, wood and bricks), and determined that the bricks were indeed the best material for the job of building a strong house. They particularly enjoyed pretending to be the Big, Bad Wolf and blowing their structures over! I learned many valuable lessons from planning this unit, specifically the importance of planning engaging and active lessons, as well as taking the student's input into account and being flexible enough to change your course on short notice. I was also given responsibility for planning a variety of Art lessons, connecting them together with the concept of sculptures. The students loved the art activities we did together, especially because they were mostly three dimensional, giving them the opportunity to create new and interesting designs. We also discussed the idea of how art can make us feel. To demonstrate this concept, we looked at many famous photographs and discussed our feelings towards them and why. The students then learned how to make three-dimensional trees out of brown paper bags, and attempted to convey feelings and meaning into the way they twisted the branches or colored the leaves. We took this activity even further and turned it into a writing exercise, where each student then wrote down how their tree made them feel, using a list of feelings we had come up with together. This series of lessons taught me how valuable it is to integrate many subjects into your lessons at once, as it adds richness to the learning as well as more opportunities for assessment. In the coming weeks, I will turn my focus to Math, specifically the Data Management and Probability strand. I am very excited to explore tallies, surveys and different types of graphs with my class. I am also looking forward to the diverse ways I plan on taking part in my school community. I am part of the Book Worm Club, which meets every Friday for half an hour in the Library, and gives students who wish to spend their time reading the opportunity to do so. We keep track of all the books each student reads, and we have made quite an impressive display of their ever-growing literary successes. I also plan to help out with the Track and Field Team, as soon as the snow melts and the ground is ready, that is! Hopefully the warm weather continues and we can get outside consistently by May. Lastly, I am very excited to volunteer to scribe for students in Grade 3 completing their EQAO Testing this year. This will take place for a week closer to the end of the year. I am sure this will be a very valuable experience for me and a great learning opportunity.
Thank you once again for taking the time to catch up on my teaching journey! Stay tuned for more updates, as I am positive April will be quite an exciting time for myself and the rest of us in the Faculty of Education! -Miss Coleman
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AuthorJessica Coleman holds a Bachelor of Education as well as an Honours Bachelor of Social Sciences, both from the University of Ottawa. She is an Ontario College of Teachers certified teacher, currently working towards a Masters of Education degree at uOttaw, as well. Archives
September 2018
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