When I go to practicum every day I feel like I am becoming a real teacher. I feel comfortable and like it’s where I am supposed to be at this point in my life. I hope to continue to grow and become even more confident, although I have already seen my confidence expand immensely. This week I got to experience the regional track meet. Wow what an experience! There are so many students and different schools all competing to go to the districts. Track and field is a huge thing at my practicum school and they train incredibly hard for it. It was great to see all of the student’s hard work paying off at the track meet. Some of the other practicum girls and I had the privilege of working the finishing line for the races. Therefore our job was to determine who came 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on and deliver ribbons to them. It seems like an easy task however it really is a difficult one especially when the races are so close! We tried our best and did a great job. I loved delivering ribbons to students who had these huge smiles on their faces. It was really fun. My other job was also to set up the teams for their relay race. I would have a group of students delivered to me and then I would place every student on their designated spot on the track where they would then wait for their other team members to deliver the baton. Overall, it was a very fun day and I enjoyed participating in an educational setting outside of the classroom as well.
Also this week, my students have begun writing their fairytales. I have brought them through the planning stage of writing and now they are onto their rough copy. I did a brief lesson teaching them about good writing and what we need to include in our fairytale writing and then they begun their writing of their own. Sometimes I forget how explicit I have to be when teaching younger grades. I told them to start writing and afterwards my SA made an additional comment to the students about how they are going to take their planning sheet and now make it into a story with full sentences and not just write exactly what’s on their planning sheet. I had an “AHA” moment because I thought it was obvious that this was the task because I did explain it briefly but many of them were confused on how to take their planning sheet and turn it into a story. Sometimes I think my brain is not wired yet to think in such an explicit fashion but teaching requires that explicitness and I know that over time my brain will become trained to think in such a way. This week was dedicated to getting some of their fairytale done in hope that they will have a good chunk of it done to show their parents on student led conferences next week.
As well this week we continued our animal research! They are looking great and the students are dedicated to the inquiry process and are really enjoying researching about an animal of interest. I also reviewed how to add and subtract two digit numbers with regrouping, something the kids have a bit of trouble with. I explained how to do the math and then did tons of examples in front of the class and had the students take out their white boards to complete some questions as well. This gives me a good indication if the students are understanding it or not. This week I also started an art assignment. The students were put into groups and I had 7 Burns Bog animals already traced out for them. As a group they are going to have to look through magazines and find the colours they need and cut out little squares from their magazines. This assignment was inspired by something we did at UBC during art class. I think my logistics were good for this lesson and management as well. I handed out the large paper with the animals drawn on them and had a student from each group come to pick it up. Then I handed out some magazines and had them start cutting from their magazines. As they were working I walked around and handed out little Ziploc bags for them to put their cut out squares. It flowed well and the students were engaged. Right now the students are at the cutting stage but eventually they will glue their pieces on the designated areas on the animal outline and it should look pretty neat! This task requires students to have to work together as a team and build those team work and collaboration skills as well as practice cutting and gluing. It’s a whole process but brings with it so many necessary lifelong skills. I am looking forward to seeing how they turn out!
Overall this week flew by… practicum is going to be over before I know it and I feel like I still have so much more to learn and accomplish.
