Wow, has time passed by quick!
I can’t believe it’s the last practicum visit for the year.
I’ve grown so attached to the students, the teacher, the class as a whole and I feel like I’ve learned so much from my visits.
My S.A is so great with all the students (and their parents)

Kindergarten and Grade 1 is such a difficult split because they run pretty much — completely differently. But My S.A. is able to make the “division” seem so smooth.

Today, The elementary school had their annual Christmas concert. I know that in class, we talk a lot about how Christmas concerts favour the dominant majority as it doesn’t really take into account those who do not celebrate Christmas. But it seemed although in that school, everyone celebrated Christmas. I haven’t seen any objections or any child refusing to participate. But then again, that might be something that I won’t get to see anyway.

Either way, it was a great show. The students were all so excited, the teachers were so excited, the parents were even more excited!

So the Christmas concert pretty much took over the whole day. So there really wasn’t much “teaching” left to do — although arguably, every moment can be a teachable moment. The process of getting calm before going on stage, performing in front of an audience, etc.

We probably had about 1.5 hours of class time all in all and I have to say, the students really go down to business during those 1.5 hours. They accomplished SO MUCH work. I was really amazed. I didn’t take they would be able to finish,  but they did an they did such a good job too. They made a “Where the wild things are” type activity, that actually was a lot of work (cutting, colouring, drawing, writing) for such a short amount of time.  I think even the students know that time is limited, so they just got right down to it!

ALL IN ALL, I’ve watched them perform THREE TIMES (yes, three times). One in the morning (dress rehearsal), one in the afternoon (performance #1) and one again in the evening (performance #2). And again and again and again, they continue to make me proud. The Grade 1’s and the Kindergarten’s both performed really well and I’m so proud of them all.

My favourite part of the day though was just being with them later in the evening. It was nice to be able to talk to a lot of them (outside the structured classroom). As they were waiting to go on stage/get picked up by parents, they were allowed to either colour or play with “tubs” (which are just containers filled with puzzles, blocks, beads, etc). Some students gave me their colouring, and I thought it was really sweet. They spelled my last name as “ing” because that’s how they pronounced it. When I tried to explain to them that it was actually, Ng, they looked at me all confused and began saying “but it’s swimmING, dancING”. At that point, I just let it go. They were beginning spellers, so I didn’t want to confuse them. I’ll correct them in the future (maybe next year).

One of the parents even came up to me to tell me how much her daughter looked forward to Thursdays because I’ll be there. I think that was the best 🙂 Made my heart so warm (she filled my bucket!)

As they were leaving, I gave them each a Holiday themed pencil. It wasn’t much, but I thought giving them a little something would be a great way to say good bye to them for now. (Pencils+Hugs)

I’m really going to miss being in the classrooms, but I can’t wait to see everyone again next year. At least it’s something to look forward to.

I LOVE THURSDAYS because I get to spend it in my Kindergarten/Grade 1 classroom.
It actually IS a jungle in there! (LITERALLY) The classroom, when I walked in, was decorated to look like a jungle. It was awesome! They had vines hanging from the ceiling, paper cut outs of trees, leaves, etc. It was actually really really cool. Parent volunteers decorated the classroom like a jungle because the students are going on a field trip on Wednesday (aww boo I won’t be there!) to watch a play adapted from the book “Where the wild things are”.

The students were all so excited to see me 🙂 Which made me feel really welcome and appreciated. I got a lot of hugs in the morning <3

Today was a more interesting day. A lot of different behaviours popped out today so it was pretty difficult 🙁 But I’m pretty glad that I was able to see a (what I think is a) “BAD DAY”. I could also see how the teacher handled the situations, which was really educational to see.

They worked on a lot of different “Worksheets” today. So they did a LOT of work and were pretty productive. They mostly worked on language arts, filling out worksheets about the different gingerbread stories they’ve been reading over the past week apparently. I didn’t really see a lot of purpose of doing two separate worksheets on, for what I think, looks like the same thing. But I guess that’s something I’ll need to ask my S.A. next week!

One thing that I did observe that I really liked was how my S.A. was making a book for another student. That student’s grandmother passed away a few weeks ago, so he’s been gone from school for about two weeks. All the students were asked to write a note (with help from their teachers of course) for the student. Their words of encouragement were all really nice and I thought my S.A. turned this into such a great learning experience (socially and emotionally) as well for the students. My favourite one I read was “I hope you know, that I’m sad for you”… I thought that was such a great example of empathy.