As it approaches the end of my long practicum, I am sad that I’d have to say goodbye to the students soon. Due to the lack of experience in Canadian primary school, I have experienced quite many new things during the last 10 weeks. This 10 weeks experience provided me with a more comprehensive insight into the teaching field and truly helped me to know myself better. I recognize that the biggest challenge for me is to continuously have the courage to face my own challenges and keep working on them with a positive attitude. When I feel stuck or frustrated, it takes time and strength to keep going and overcome. One of the takeaways from the process is that it takes time for both of my students and me to learn and have improvements. As much as it is very frustrating to see people around you doing better than you are, we need to learn to accept ourselves and compare ourselves with no one else expect our own past. I have to truly accept that myself before I can deliver the message to my students. With that said, it is important to work collaboratively with others to help each other reflect, feel confident, and become better.  

I am always afraid of doing read-aloud especially when I am not familiar with the book from the beginning. The fear of having words that I do not know how to pronounce constantly stops me from enjoying the activity. I have taken on a new chapter book for read-aloud during the last couple weeks. It was a unique experience for me to learn along the students and to have the students help me with some of the words. Having a student saying to me “It is Ok Miss. Lu because English isn’t your first language either”, and helping me admit to the students that I am still learning from them and also with them. I would be so worried that my English level would disqualify me from being a teacher, but now I see that there are more aspects to it.

It feels nice to sit back and observe someone else’s lesson again during the last week. It provides me with a different insight into the classroom. This time, I had a better understanding of the classroom and teaching, and I knew the students much better than before. I am still learning new things from observing others, and I can’t wait to try these things myself in the near future.

It has been very encouraging to see the student, who is diagnosed with selective mutism, starting to talk to more and more peers. Today he put up his hand to come up as a volunteer for one of the activities that I planned. Ever since we had chess in our classroom, he really enjoyed playing them. He was good at playing chess, too. I think that the chess really helped with opening up conversations with his peers. It is truly amazing how one item might have such significant effect on the students.

Today, one student asked me whether we were giving the graph a “name” or a “title” during my math class. I used these two words interchangeably without realizing that was causing confusions for my students. I was very happy that she asked, which probably helped many other students to clarify as well, and provided me the chance to correct myself. Thanks to that student, I learned that we as teachers should pick our words more thoughtfully, and make it as clear as possible for the students.

I also receive one valuable advice from my EA, who had known the students for many years. She suggested that instead of stressing myself out over these issues, I should first focus on the academics. It would take a long time to build a strong relationship with the students in order to provide all the help that they need. Acknowledging the student’s feeling is good but I should not expect to magically solve all the problems in a short period of time.

I had a day exploring the magic power of language in the classroom. Using sentences like “I invite you to think about…” when giving out instructions and “I really like how you …” to show that the student’s strength or improvement is acknowledged. I also tried to make sure that the students feel that their voices were heard and valued.

Instead of saying “You need to put away your book and go sit on the carpet”, I tried to say:

“Which Dog Man (the title of the book) are you reading”

“The first one”

“It would be cool if you use that (a toy he was holding) as the bookmark”

When I saw one student leaving the room saying “I hate gym”, instead of telling the student “You need to go back there and join the class”, I tried:

“Why don’t you like Gym”

“The whole stretching thing is lame”

“What are some sports or games you like to do”

“Skiddle (and other games)”

I also got valuable feedback from my school adviser about my wording. When I get too comfortable with the students and the classroom environment, I tend to talk in a casual way and use words such as “yea…” I tend to say that when students make a comment that isn’t so relevant to the content, or I did not know how to respond at that moment. Now I can see that “yea” can sometimes cause confusions for the students. It is not very professional, and it doesn’t really show a clear opinion towards the student’s comment.

One of the biggest takeaways of this week for me is being flexible. This week I used the student’s interests on Pokemon books as the lesson hook to introduce graphs and charts. Last week I observed two students playing a game with their Pokemon book. Each student picked three main types of Pokemon and did a frequency count on their chosen types to see whose Pokemon show up more often in the book.

Halfway through the lesson, I realize that most of the students did not understand my instruction on one of the activities. I explained to the students that if more than half of you didn’t understand the question, then I did a bad job at explaining so please let me try again. I tried explaining again, but quickly enough I realized that it was not just my explanation wasn’t clear; the students did not understand the concept behind it either. Needless to say, I had to drop my lesson plan halfway and go back to the basics.

It was unfortunate that I wasn’t able to be in the classroom for long enough to know the students’ levels and the materials covered before. The teacher and I also had some miscommunications about the materials that were covered before, which resulted in the gap between my expectations and the students’ current level of understandings on graphs and charts.

After the Math class, I talked to my school teacher and asked for her suggestions. Despite the fact that the class did not go the way as I planned, she was still glad to see me trying new things and taking initiatives. We both agreed that now I would have a much better understanding of the students’ current mathematical levels. One suggestion that really resonated with me was to break down the lesson into smaller steps to set up the students for success. Sometimes I assume that the students would see the connections between different ideas, but in fact, it differs for everyone. Also, making my expectations clear to the students at the beginning of the class, so the students can have a better understanding of what they need to learn would really help.

One of the focuses of my physical and health education for this week is to get the students become more active and encouraging. There will also be times that the students need to focus on fundamental movement skills or communication skills. It is hard to include all these elements into one lesson, but it is important to plan multiple of them in the unit plan to make it as comprehensive as possible.

I am more aware that teaching any subject or any unit would be a long journey, which requires much patience. Even for Physical and Health Education, it requires the teacher to put many factors, not only safety and participation, into considerations in order to make a good lesson. It also involves a big amount of time to develop mutual understandings on how things will be done in this classroom before a successful lesson can take place. For example, introducing, learning, practicing, and effectively responding to a new signal in the gym are all necessary steps that build on each other. Moreover, all of these will take up an amount of time to develop depends on the age group.

Moving beyond the signals, the students and the teacher need to have the mutual understanding and expectation. Having the students be willing to respond to a signal is also a big challenge. It is necessary to show the students that we care about what they want, but there will be also consequences for disrespectful behaviors. A positive relationship with the students is the foundation of everything.

I tried something new today. Before I started my sound activity with the class today, I went to one of the students and specifically invited him to join us for the sound activity that I prepared. This student usually does not join the carpet time with the others. He would sit at the table near the carpet with an EA and work on his own things. He would listen or join the conversation from time to time, but he does not seem to be interested in being fully engaging in the classroom.

I told the student that we would be doing a sound activity, which would be really fun if he wants to join us at the carpet so he could see better and engage better. He simply replied with an “OK”, but later I noticed that he participated better even though he still chose to sit at his table. He put up his hand to answer questions throughout my sound activity, and also the music and math class after that. When I approached him during math time and asked if he was willing to explain his thinking strategies, he showed willingness in talking and explaining his work to me.

It is possible that today is just a coincidence, but I see the potentials in having him better engaged in more activities in the future. I believe that letting him know what is happening ahead of time makes him feel more prepared. Moreover, showing him that I care about his presence and would love to have him with us together in the classroom make him feel more welcomed as well.

Recently, there are many issues with the students’ communication skills. Students were not being very respectful to each other and to adults around them. Students were not using good listening skills during the carpet time. There were a lot of interruptions during a discussion. One student walked away from me while I was talking to him couple times, and I had to pull him aside for a conversation. The teacher had to spare time to discuss this issue with the class.

The teacher asked the students to think about the core competencies that they had been talking about and think about what does it mean to be respectful to others. Here are some answers that the students provided:

• Don’t ignore the signals. Stop at the signals (ex. Chime, bell, clapping)
• Sitting nicely and ready to listen
• Looking at the speaker
• No interruptions while other people are talking
• Don’t boss around. It is different from helping others
• Reminding our friends; having responsibilities to help each other

The class had the same conversation when they decided to make a classroom agreement. However, the students needed constant reminders to make it truly work. Despite the fact that there are many projects need to be finished, it is still more important to have this conversation with the class.

Fostering good habits takes time and especially when there are so many other things going on in the students’ lives outside of the school. Frustrations from home or with friends can have a major influence on the class. I realized how friendships play crucial roles in the classroom and can affect the classroom’s atmosphere significantly. As it might sound very obvious, but I did not truly understand until I witnessed it myself. As educators, it is our responsibilities to find the root of the problem and provide suitable support accordingly.