Monday March 30th
Today was the first day of my 10-week practicum as well as my first formal observation by my FA. I have to admit that when I woke up I was extremely nervous, I hadn’t taught in a couple of weeks AND I was being formally observed! My FA ended up observing my first of 3 lessons that were scheduled for the day, poetry. The lesson that I had prepared was an inquiry into poetry lesson in which the students were to work with their table groups in order to investigate some essential poetry questions (why do some poems look differently from others? What is the purpose of writing poems that are different in structure? How can poetry be influenced by our real life events? Etc.). This lesson I feel has a lot of potential, however, along the way it became too structured and there were a number of things that I could have done better. For example, I originally planned the lesson to be all about finding and sharing poems with their desk groups and then with the whole class, however, when I started to actually plan the lesson I decided to add in some questions to help them understand the essentials of poetry, but now realize I should have left it as it was. Another issue was the lack of iPads, the nature of inquiry lessons requires you to use iPads, however, we only have a class set of 5… So the students had to share one per group of 6 kids. This did not work too well… the students who had iPads were very engaged while the students who did not were either unengaged or working with a book. My lesson for tomorrow has a similar format (in that they need to do some online research) so I have learnt from my mistakes and have signed out the class set of ipads so that each child will have their own and thus is able to work individually or with their desk groups. I think that this will make for a better lesson.

My next lesson was math. I think it went really well… aside from the fact that some of the students thought that the content was a little too easy for them as we started our unit on telling time. While I really don’t want to undermine any student’s intelligence, I KNOW that a lot of my grade 4’s and a few grade 5’s still do not know how to tell time and as such it is important for me to stick with my lessons. I have planned on letting the students know that I understand telling time is a review for some students but that we are all at different levels so I will try and make it more fun and engaging for my students who are comfortable with telling time while helping the other students learn and feel confident with the material.
My last lesson of the day was HACE-FRIENDS for life, however, my SA had forgotten that we planned the lesson and had already confirmed with some other classes to go outside for a massive DPA game of man hunt!! I was okay with switching my lesson to another day, my first real “go with the flow” change! Woohoo!

Tuesday March 31st
The day was good, I taught two more lessons: LA and Math. Though both lessons went well, I am still worried about the content of my math lessons. I am feeling uncomfortable teaching the lessons as I am feeling as though the kids are unengaged and finding the lessons to be extremely boring. I am going to have a chat with my SA tomorrow about how I can spice it up a little!

Wednesday April 1st
My lessons on Wednesday went quiet well and my SA was able to share a few tips with me that I was able to instantly implement and I honestly saw a huge difference. She suggested giving the kids a 2,5,10,15, 20, 30, 60 sec minute warning until they need to be fully ready. It really resonated with me that the kids need a fair warning to get themselves ready to succeed in what I am asking, and if I am giving them the chance to succeed, I in turn am succeeding too! It was a great realization that I plan to carry with me through my practicum and later career!

Thursday April 2nd
Thursday went well also! I changed around a couple of things in my math lesson to (hopefully) make it more engaging for the students who are finding the lessons too easy (such as a telling time game and an arrangement game in which they have to all place themselves in order from AM-PM). All in all it was a great first week. I am quite sick with both a cold and sinus infections; however, I was still able to manage the week… I am looking forward to next week when (hopefully) all of my energy will be back up!