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.