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.
The students went out to look at trees the other day and they gathered pieces of bark then they used the bark to make a tree trunk and colourful tissue paper for the leaves. Then they each named their trees! I thought they all looked absolutely adorable and it’s such a good art project to do to connect to the botany unit. My SA has a degree in Art so she likes planning art projects for her class and they’ve already done quite a bit within their first month of school. I cannot wait to see more of the class’s work!
When the bell rang, my SA showed me where she picked up the students from outside. Once everyone comes into the class, they put their backpacks and coats away in their cubby and sit in front of their hooks with their “take home folders” and water bottles. It’s always a race in the morning to see which side of the cubby hole wins first and then those children get to go to the carpet first. I had a brief introduction at this point and told the kids my name. I wish I could have more time to introduce myself and allow the kids to really know who I was but I guess there’s always time for that later. On the way to the carpet, the children place their water bottles on a round table. My SA told me that 8 of the students in the class are new to Montessori and she only introduced them to the concept of the carpet being a “work space” earlier this week. So many of the children would still walk across the carpet throughout the day instead of walking around it as you would in a typical Montessori classroom. We started off the day on the carpet and did a check in with everyone. There was a conflict between two of the children and we discussed how to resolve it during “circle time.” The class also taught me about the zones of regulation and told me what each colour (red, yellow, blue, green) meant. After this, they went to computers and since it was my SA’s prep block, she was able to sit down and talk to me about the class and take me on a tour of the school.
She told me that there are several kids in the class with special learning needs and at first this frightened me because it was already a small class as is but I looked at it positively and realized that this would be a wonderful experience for me to have in the classroom! After recess, it was math time and my SA showed me how to use the “stamp game.” I helped some of the students with their math and helped prompt them to work individually instead of talking to their peers.
It was Montessori development day at the school so in the afternoon we went to a workshop where we learned about problem based learning. I found this type of teaching to be interesting and I can’t wait to try to incorporate it in the classroom! I think it will be fun to present the class with a problem and work through it together to foster inquiry and critical thinking. Perhaps I will keep this in mind and do a teach like this during my 10 week practicum in the Spring!
Next week I’m going to be there for a full day and I can’t wait!