Day Two

I was super excited to start the second day of my practicum. Earlier in the week, I discussed with my SA’s about decorating the classroom door in a fall theme. I thought this would be a nice way for visitors and the students to enter the classroom. The door is a tree and each student is a leaf and it says fall into learning (see picture below). The students and teachers both loved the door!

Today, I read a halloween book to the students. It was about a girl that was walking to a halloween party and she kept running into different characters along her way. She first ran into a black cat and then two skeletons. She continued to run into characters until eventually she got to the party and all the people she met along the way were there. As a class we discussed the names of the characters she met along the way. These words were then posted on a word wall in the classroom. The students were then asked to draw a halloween picture using some of the characters in the story. They then had to label one of the characters they drew using the word wall for assistance. This helped them learn the new vocabulary words.

After lunch, the students partcipated in outdoor education for the first time. The teacher first read a book about spiders and the different types of webs. Then the students were divided into pairs and told that they had to stay with their buddy. Each pair was given a magnifying glass so that they could look at spider webs more closely.  We went outside as a class, off school grounds, to look for spiders and their webs. We walked to a community garden where the children were allowed to explore the environment with their partners. They looked for webs and spiders and commented on all the other wildlife they saw too. The children were very engaged in the activity and I thought it was a great way to learn about the topic. When we got inside the children were asked to sit on the carpet and one by one they had to describe the type of web they saw outside. Once this was completed they could partcipate in center time.

Overall, it was a very busy day with lots of activities happening. I am excited to witness the children learning in an outdoor enironment and look forward to our future adventures.

Classroom Door