Monthly Archives: January 2016

01/31/16

Weekly school visits (Jan 28, 15)

It is good to be back in the classroom after not being here last week. The classroom layout has changed significantly changed since the last time I was visiting the class.

Instead of the round tables being at the front of the room, the rectangle table was placed in front instead. Throughout the months I have been in this classroom, there has been numerous changes in the format. This is because there is an emphasis on the importance of the prepared environment in the Montessori philosophy.

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01/31/16

Accepting differences lesson

For one of my lessons during my 2 week practicum, I taught the class about multiculturalism and the importance of acceptance.

As a hook activity, I provided each group with a colouring sheet and asked each group to only colour the picture with one colour. The students were puzzled by this and asked me why they could only colour with one colour but I assured that I would tell them when they were finished. Afterwards, I gave the students an identical colouring sheet and had them colour it however they do so please.

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01/31/16

Language materials

Today I had the opportunity to watch the children in my class work with language materials. Many of them had not used them before so they were all quite excited to be able to use them for the first time.

There were a variety of boxes to choose from and the children work from left to right starting with the pink ones. With each box, they learn new grammatical structures.

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01/31/16

Peace lesson

For Remembrance day, I decided to teach a lesson on peace.

I began by asking the class what peace means to them and I wrote the definitions on the board. This allowed them to see the words visually and helped those who may be visual learners absorb the material better.

Afterwards, I read the book “Paulie Pastrami brings world peace” to the class. The book gave the class ideas for bringing about peace in their communities.

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01/21/16

Weekly school visits: week 3

Today we ran our animal kingdom inquiry first thing. I showed the class how to use a mind-map to organize what they already know about their animal kingdom into categories. They answered my questions and looked interested in creating their own. After my demonstration, we put them into the revised groups we made at the end of the day last week and I drew their assigned animal kingdoms out of a basket because then it would be randomized.

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01/21/16

Weekly school visits: week 2

Today is my first full day of my classroom visit. We started the day with language arts where the students were able to work on independent Montessori materials after they finished their journals. Some students used the entire time to work on their journals while others finished quickly and started on their independent Montessori work.

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01/21/16

Weekly school visits: week 1

Today was my first day in the Grade 1-3 classroom. I arrived to the school early but my SA was running late so I had to wait by myself in her classroom for a while. I wasn’t exactly nervous coming into the classroom but the anticipation of meeting her started to build up my anxiety a little bit. When she got to the classroom, she put me to work right away! She told me to take the children’s artwork off the bulletin board outside and replace it with a new art project they made.

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