April’s Fools, what a day, our little pranks were great fun! And I got to teach two lessons I was really excited about, so it was just a great day! The first lesson was Social Studies, looking at early settlement into Ancient India. We began by discussing why people generally move and students had the opportunity to talk to a partner and then report out. I have noticed a change in the students’ behavior during these “think-pair-shares,” they have gotten much better with practice. Most importantly, they have a better understanding of my expectations and I have seen participation levels increase. After this general discussion, students received a new information package. One of my goals in this class is to help students transition smoothly into high school and into young adulthood. I want to keep presenting ideas and tasks that challenge their thinking and work skills. So, my aim with providing an information package as a supplement with their textbook was to introduce the idea of comparing two resources talking about the same topic. Mainly looking at how their work and research can benefit with more than one source, looking for similarities and differences, and then using this to their advantage. I like to offer little details from my experience as a university student as well because they have been quite interested in this, and specifically UBC, since day one. For example, I have told them that for some of my classes I have had multiple textbooks or I would have to use a number of different types of sources to write long essays. I think students really appreciate it when they are given a reason or explanation behind why they are asked to do a certain task. For example, our talk about why they should pre-plan their writing. From a social and emotional aspect, by doing this, I feel I am in a sense respecting students – offering them an explanation shows that I know they understand and comprehend what I am about to tell them. This can be really important for this age group, as they sort of want their increasing levels of maturity to be acknowledged, or the fact that they are slowly entering young adulthood. Coming back to the participation piece, I was actually positively surprised when students had so much to offer in the second discussion on reasons for settling in the Indus Valley. In fact, I had not expected this discussion to take so much time. Because of this I felt like the amount of time for the actual planning and writing of the letter got shortened. However, this is something I need to get used to – thing taking more or less time than I expected – and adjusting accordingly. Because of this I did have to come back to the letter towards the end of the day and offer some clarification around the time-period – I asked students if they were an early settler, what date should they be using. They were able to look into the textbook and discover the time-period of the beginning of this civilization. This was a good learning experience for myself as well because now I see that sometimes a lesson does not just finish when the bell goes. Instead, I may have to come back to it a little later to clear up some missing elements or simply offer students the chance to ask questions related to any confusing material.

The second lesson I taught was math and my focus for this lesson was how I responded to student’s answers and comments. As a teacher, I expect students to be participating in my teaching – answering questions, offering ideas and comments. So, I think it is only fair that I have something to offer back to appreciate students’ responses, which only serves to further motivate future participation. As a result, I tried to closely monitor how I responded. Specifically, trying to use as many positive and neutral comments. So, if an answer were correct, I would repeat the answer and then offer some feedback. Generally, I try to repeat what the student said, with my own explanation. If possible, I use a personal example or experience that fits in with the material. For example, in almost every math lesson, students have to copy “Key Ideas” from either the textbook or those, which I have created and posted on the Smart Board. I had noticed that a lot of the students were getting a little lazy to do this. So this time, when I asked them to copy these notes, I asked them to also think to themselves, why these notes are so important and why they should be copying them down. Then we had a quick discussion. And the students brought up great points. One student said something along the lines of “by writing these down, they will stay in our brains.” So, I responded by identifying the answer as correct but then also following up with my own experience. I explained that while I did my Psychology degree, I had to take a course about memory and in that course I learned about something called “consolidation.” And basically, research has found that the more you repeat information – by reading it, writing it and looking back at it – the more likely you are to store it in your memory. And then if you have it in your memory, you can use it on the test. I have always noticed that when I offer little experiences like this, I have much more attention as opposed to when I just simply respond with “That’s right” or “yes.” Something else I really have been trying to work on is my wait time. That is both waiting for the class’ full attention and allowing enough time in between asking a question and choosing students to answer. For this first attention piece, I have personally seen an improvement in myself, as I have gotten a little firmer about this. I basically just tell the students that it is really hard for me to move on and I’m going to have to wait. I have seen this strategy work a lot better compared to asking them to be quiet or using “shhh.” I also believe this has helped improve my confidence level in assuming the position of a teacher as I feel more in command!