Ma première journée à Cedardale était une aventure! J’ai eu la privilège de travailler avec l’équipe primaire. J’ai passée du temps dans une classe de troisième, une classe de deuxième et une classe de maternelle et première année.

Le premier chose qui m’a vraiment frappé était les aspect physiques de l’école. Il n’y a pas beaucoup de salles de classes, mais les salles son grandes avec plein d’espace pour les élèves et en plus, des fenêtres énormes qui permettent beaucoup de lumière naturelle d’entrer dans la salle de classe.

My first morning was spent in a grade three class. One interesting thing incorporated into all of Cedardale’s primary classes is the system of having the students identify their mood during attendance, or in their journal. There is a red zone, yellow zone, blue zone and green zone. Though I didn’t get to see much of this in action, I did observe that especially in journaling, the colour zones allow students to associate the abstract concepts of their moods and emotions to a concrete concept such as a colour.

During the math lesson I was helping with, the teacher took me by surprise by announcing that we were going to have “5 minutes de dance”. As a summer camp leader and a dancer, dancing it out is one of my favourite activities. UBC has provided it’s teacher candidates with the concepts and some ideas for bran breaks, but I have never seen it in action, and not in a primary classroom. They had choreographed dance routines that they did as a way to de-stress, and get their brains able to refocus afterwards. And on top of that, it was really fun! This is definitely a practice that I would love to incorporate into my own teaching!