First year teacher interview

It was nice to see my teacher Miss DePietro again answering questions about her experiences in her first years of teaching. I really enjoyed all the resources that they gave us to start our classrooms off. Some of the tips were great and necessary to get a job. I especially liked the idea to give the students a post card writing them to say how excited the teacher is to meet them and have a great year together. It was good to have two different perspectives, one of a primary teacher and one of an intermediate teacher. This was great because of the diversity of our group! I think that they did a great job and I would recommend that next year you bring in some first year teachers also to answer questions.

bowling

I had a great time bowling with everyone. I'm sorry I missed the slide show on valentines day. Thanks Pat for compiling the pictures together. I really liked all the activities that we had that the social comity organized. Going out to the bar last semester, going out for dinner and bowling! It would have been nice to have everyone out for bowling however the weather just didn't cooperate. I'm looking forward to one last group gathering at Sandy! See you Thursday

Last days

It is unbelieveable how fast this school year has gone. I cant believe that this is our last week. Having our last classes is sad but it means that we are almost starting a new section of our lives. This week will be sad especilly Thursday, however i know that the skills learned will come in handy in the years to come! Have a great week everyone:)

First day of Placement

I was very nervous to be placed in a grade six class. To me this was a very intimidating grade. They are big, and know so much. However when I walked into the classroom, my associate teacher was very welcoming. The students were well behaved and I was able to help them in their math, language and religion. I was afraid that since they are an older grade I would not know how to complete some of there work, which in hindsight is ridiculous since I have been in school for 20 years. I have a degree in physical education, and minor in biology and I’m almost done teachers collage. I think that this is a common feeling among people in our counselling group that were in primary first. Change is always difficult but we must be confident in ourselves and know that we can do a good job. I’m happy with my grade six class. It will be an adjustment from my grade 2 class. But I feel that this will be a good experience and I will learn a lot from my associate teacher!

Literature Circles

I went to a workshop that Harvey Daniels the creator of literature circles told us that the former method of using role sheets (such as Illustrator, director, questioner etc.) de-motivates students. Students need to have practice creating questions and answering them. The goal is higher level thinking by reading and answering questions about the book. Sticky notes should be used instead of the role sheets because this is a more realistic way of reading. We as adults do not read a book and draw a picture of a scene in the book. We naturally ask questions. Literature circles should be used to create discussion and understanding of the book.

The information from this workshop can be found at www.walloon.com under conference handouts.

Poetry triangle- a way to teach poetry

How the poetry triangle works is you pick a topic. Then every word relates back to the topic for example:
Teacher
Passionate Teacher
Busy Passionate Teacher
Stressed Busy Passionate Teacher
Multi-tasking Stressed Busy Passionate Teacher
This is a template that can get the students writing poetry in a simple way that will motivate the students and give them confidence to write poetry. This method was used by Toni Stead.

Poetry

On Valentines Day I went to the conference reading for the love of it in Toronto. There were many different speakers during the day that helped me a lot with different aspects of literacy. One workshop was on the writing process and poetry. The writing process has planning, drafting, revising, research, and learning. There is also a editing, mechanics and publishing involved in writing. However not all of the process needs to occur for each writing assignment. For example not all writing requires publishing. Editing and publishing should not be used when writing in journals. This form of writing should be just be used to write so the students can express their emotions in a free form of writing. When writing poetry we can use the sense of colour. For example the student would pick an emotion and than pick a colour that describes or that corresponds to the colour. Then the students would describe the emotion using their senses. For example: It sounds like... It smells like... it tastes like... it looks like.... than end with the ____(emotion) feels like ____ (the colour). This was one example of a form of poetry that you could do in your classroom.

Mock Interviews

The mock interviews were very informative for me. I have never been a very good speaker and I have never been good at interviews. I was nervous when the principle asked me a question even though there was no pressure. This concerns me and also opens my eyes that i will have to practice the interview process before i actually get interviewed. I felt the pressure last class and really will need to work so I know my stuff cold so that my nerves do not get too out of control. It was great to hear some of the questions though, most of them if really thought about them I could answer however to put all the jargon and information in the answers i will need to work through them. It was good to hear the questions though to get some idea of what they will ask us!

second social issues day

The social issues day was a very touching day. I really enjoyed the speakers that talked about the Holocaust. I think that this type of education is very important so that a tragedy like this does not ever happen again. I was grateful that the second speaker, a Holocaust survivor talked to us about his experience. I think it takes courage to think about this event and speak about it to such a large audience. The other seminars I went to were really well done. I went to the stress lecture where the man put us into a trance which was neat but weird at the same time. I felt a little sick when he was putting us into the trans. I don't know if that is a normal reaction but it was interesting all in all. I went to the tribes seminar too, this was very interesting. I think that it would be great to take a course to become more familiar with the tribes concept to teach with. Some of the ideas I know would work very well in a classroom. I would love to get my hands on an activity book however without the course i feel i would not know how to put the true philosophy into practice. This was a great day, and i learned a lot from the speakers and the activities they planed.

outdoor -ed activity with my grade 2's

Before christmas I went back to my first blocks school to do an outdoor education activity with the students. The students and I really enjoyed this day. I read the book "That Chickadee Feeling" by Frank Glew. This is a great book and the students were very engaged. This was the first time they had heard this story and they thought that a chickadee feeling was only a feeling that you could get if a chickadee landed on you. We then went into more depth about different feelings that could be considered a chickadee feeling. The book described how the boy fed the chickadee in his hand and they were excited to be a part of feeding the little chickadees. This tied nicely into making the bird feeders. We made suet by using lard. I told the students that they could also make suet by grinding up fat from beef and pork. This activity was very messy but the students were on task and engaged. The students were able to do this activity independently except for tying the ribbon around the pinecone. I would not have thought that this would be a concern. The clean up was a little tedious however I swept when the students were out for recess.
The birdhouses were a lot of fun for the students, however I’m not sure how long they will actually last outside. They students were able to name all of the shapes and identify them in their birdhouse. The students were excited to take these home as a Christmas present for the birds.
I enjoyed this day and I think that it was a good learning experience for the students. I’m grateful to my associate teacher for letting me teach for the day even though I wasn’t on my teaching block. I asked her if I could come in and teach this lesson and she was very eager.