On our first day, we rotated through the classrooms of the three host teachers at Annieville Elementary. I started in the Grade 3 classroom. The students were working on writing a story about the nests they had built in Science. The students had written the process of creating the nests in Science and now they were to write a narrative about nests. In LLED 353, we have been discussing school genres and it really enhanced my learning to see the concept being enacted  in a classroom.

After recess I moved to the Grade 4/5 classroom. The teacher was using beans and a camera projector to teach decimals. This really excited me. I love using technology and hands on learning together. The students would make the decimals on their sheets along with the teacher and then wrote it as a decimal, fraction, words, and expanded form. The set-up was my ideal Math teaching setup. I really believe that manipulatives are key to helping students understand numbers and being able to work through an example with the whole class through the projectors was exciting.

I spent the afternoon in the Grade 7 classroom. This classroom was amazing. The teachers desk was in middle of the room and the students desks were in two rings around the room. The teacher had also set up a seven comfy reading areas around the room. The students love these and are selected via name drawn out of a jar of popsicle sticks. After silent reading the class moved on to French. This was a bit intimidating for me as the teacher had told me she almost had a double major in French before class. She is very skilled and the lesson was a dynamic one for sure. The students were having a studying session for the test the next day. She spoke almost exclusively in French. She did some pronunciation and translation exercises and then moved on to Bingo. My French skills are marginal at best. The idea of teaching French a bit scary but a challenge I am ready to take on.