My Internship Experience
Week Fifteen12/18/2020 Last week of internship, it was a great internship and I’m thankful for Mrs. Badowich as she helped me in so many ways. She gave me lots of resources and made me feel like a teacher. Through internship I have learnt so much and have learnt more during internship then the rest of my schooling.
I am thankful to be done but will miss all the students very much, I hope I can come back and sub soon so I can see all of them. I am excited to get out and sub as I will gain more experience as a teacher and build more connections to make me a more successful teacher. I already have one substitute day planned at Dr.Brass that I am looking forward to. This week in school most of our activities were based around Christmas, but still had connection to the curriculum. It made the school work fun and made the students want to learn. I did really well with teaching my small group to do an addition colouring page, and they seemed to have a hand on doing addition with a number line. It was a great last week, and I’m excited for a little Christmas break before substituting and doing online University classes. Although I am sad I can not see anyone during my time off.
0 Comments
Week Fourteen12/10/2020 This week involved two mock interviews, and another observation at a different school.
The mock interviews were very stressful, I don't like interviews very much. I spent many hours writing out some ideas for questions I came up with and for some questions that my aunty shared that she used to ask people who she interviewed. I even spent an hour on the phone with my aunty where she gave me some questions and asked me what I would respond to them, and gave me more ideas on what the school division looks for as answers. Lots of feedback I received was to share my own experience, and not just list things I would do. My first interview was on Tuesday with my advisor Darran Tenenyke, although I was a little bit nervous during the interview, I seemed to be able to answer every question and didn't seem to struggle with any. Overall it was a good interview, with some feedback on what the school division particularly looks for as appose to some of my answers but I also had some answers that were exactly what the school division looked for. After the first interview I felt more relaxed and ready for my interview with Quintin Robertson on Thursday. My interview on Thursday started with a meeting with Mr. Trost, where we shared two stars and a wish. My two stars were my connections I was able to make with my students and other teachers, and how I was able to observe other classrooms. My wish was that I was able to observe academy stuff at my school. We also registered for SPTRB, we went through the GSSD hiring process and went over how to make a great resume/ cover letter. My interview with Quintin was at 1:30. My interview was good, Quintin said I had great answers and some of my answers were exactly what the school division were looking for. On Wednesday afternoon, I spent it observing the grade 1/2 classroom at Yorkdale central school. To start we only had the grade 1's while the grade 2's were outside for phys.ed. Mrs. Reminek started with going over the calendar activities as a whole group lesson, each day had a picture to create a pattern and then they read the date as a class. She then asked a student to tell her the day and then another student to say the month. To end calendar activities they sang the days of the week song (theme song Adam's Family) and the Months of the year song. The students did the weather next, where one student would say what the weather was today. I liked how they did their count to 100 days of school, each day they would add a number to their caterpillar body above the smartboard. The students all sat at tables and had baskets with their supplies on the side of the room, I think this helped with students staying on task. The next subject was math, where they are learning addition with part, part, whole boards. They went over as a group this using sheets with the part part, whole diagram and cubes. Then the students do their own worksheets. When the student's finished they got to play the power of ten game, which was exactly like the card game war. To end of the day they made a card for Ms. Sauser. Which I was surprised when they all could write their letters and could spell most words. Week Thirteen11/30/2020 This week involved a lot of observations in other rooms or schools. It was a nice change to see how other teachers taught the desired outcomes and to see how they handled their classroom management. Although it was nice seeing other classrooms and the students I sure did miss my class while I was observing else where.
The first room I observed was the grade 2/3 room at Dr. Brass. This is Mrs. Kitchen's room. There was some ideas she did the same as Mrs. Badowich, such as Rhyme Magic. One thing I noticed when was if she had one student off track she ignored it because the rest of the students were listening; if she was to instruct that student to pay attention she could lose the focus of the rest of the room. (This is as long as they aren't distracting others). Another thing I noticed was she called on students even if they didn't have their hands up so she heard from more students, each student she called on without their hand up they knew the answers just chose not to raise their hands. For math I loved how she had a number of the day, and then the she repeated the previous lesson to those students who were still struggling and the students who understood the outcome did challenging work. In every child's desk they have a 100 chart, and bins beside the desk where children keep all their notebooks instead of a teacher having to grab them every time. Then at the end of the day their bins go in their lockers. A game I enjoyed that she played was guess my number; students have to guess the number she has wrote down by asking a variety of questions like "in the hundred's spot is it an odd number?" To line up the students they played sparkle; the students count up to 25 by 5's. If they say 25 they have to line up. My next observation was Phys.ed 2/3, the students start with 3 laps when they come in. Then the students played British bulldog; one person is it and then other students have to run to the other without getting tagged. If the students get tagged then they are it too. On Wednesday, I went to Davidson School in Melville to observe Mrs. Koval & Miss Lang. Since they don't have morning recess anymore the students come in and do bell work. Each day is something new; on Monday they practice in their writing books, on Tuesday they do basket work, on Wednesday it is would you rather Wednesday, Thursday I cannot recall what it was and then on Friday its flashlight Friday (students read under their desks with a flashlight). For reading logs the students get a week to read the books they get sent home and there is only about 4 students each day. When the students bring it back a teacher reads with each student who brings their books back to check their learning. Mrs. Koval also does calendar activities like calendar but Mrs. Koval has a booklet for the students to follow along with. (This is something I will look for to have within my own classroom) A common thing students did was put their pencils in the air when they were done instead of shouting I am done. A neat idea she did was have a special student, where in the hallway she had questions where the student answered for everyone to see. Another thing she did was have a show and tell each day, just one student and even when they never brought anything the students get to ask them three questions about themselves. Like Mrs. Kitchen she also had baskets but she had baskets that slide out for the kids to hold pencil cases for easier access. For phonics another idea she had for reading words was using hands, example for shin they would say sh with one hand out and then in with the other hand out and then put them together and clap. Some management ideas she had was bathroom passes, each child has a magnet with their name on it when they leave for the bathroom they move their magnet to the board under the title bathroom pass. She also would say salami to get the students attention. Another management technique was using marbles; the marbles would all start in the teacher jar and then when the students had a good day they would gain a marble in their jar. When the students had all the marbles they would receive a marble party where they got a special snack and were able to watch 15 minutes of a movie. I like for all her activities the students had booklets in their desk for it, and they would do it first then would go over as a class. Her classroom was way different than ours, with only one student who had trouble reading, every student I saw could write sentences and they all knew the numbers. My last observation of the week was in the Kindergarten room with Mrs. Beynon, at Dr. Brass. Week Twelve11/27/2020 This week was my last full week of teaching and the rest of my internship I start to teach less. I feel it was a great last week of teaching; and am really going to miss teaching to this group of children. I can't wait till I become a full time teacher and have my own classroom but I am feeling like a weight is lifted off of me because my internship assessment is almost over.
This week was Student Led Conferences; it was a new learning experience for me as I was never apart of this before or learning the steps of student led on remote. My role was more of a observer as I didn't provide feedback to parents or talk on the phone; I did say hi to those students that we haven't seen in awhile and assisted with questions. To start each interview Edz starts with a positive statement or a statement about what the student achieves in. She says this is what parents really want to hear; and can help the interviews be more successful. Next we verify the student info which right now is very important because there is a chance we could end up moving to remote and we need to be able to get a hold of each family. This leads to the next step remote learning or seesaw for this class. We need to make sure every family is registered so if we move to remote they have access to learn from home. We finally get into report cards on this step; start with how well the student is doing and then go into the factors affecting student achievement for each subject. This leads to asking parents if they want any supplemental learning to do at home with their student; getting parents on board with the students learning can be very beneficial to the student. To end student led conferences ask the guardians if they have any questions or concerns; if you were thorough during interviews most of the time they don't have any but asking gives guardians reassurance that you are open to their concerns. Week Eleven11/20/2020 This week was a normal week compared to the past couple of weeks with Halloween and Remembrance day. We had a very low number of students only about ten each day, lots of students families are concerned about the virus and we even have one student moving to remote. They started on remote but found out the classwork was to advanced for them and decided to come back but with the growing cases they have become worried again. This makes assessing the students very difficult because its hard to assess students when they miss a lot of school or switch back and forth between remote and in person. Although I understand parents are very worried about their student and have to do what's best for them.
One positive thing that happened this week is one of the students who regularly miss school and only show up about 2 times during the week made it the whole week to school. We also constantly struggle with getting this student to do any work during her two days because she becomes very emotional when its something she doesn't want to do or is very tired that she falls asleep in class. But this week was very different I think because of the routine of showing up to class and because they are beginning to understand that classrooms are for learning that she was able to get some work done. I worked one on one with her for most of the week and tried to make the activities more fun so she stayed motivated to do work; and after working hard for a bit I gave her Ipad time so that she wasn't pushed too hard and lost motivation. Next week is Student Led Conferences; although they are all either on the phone or video conferencing it will be a new experience for me. I am excited to learn about student led conferences, and to see listen to them next week. Week Ten11/11/2020 This week was a very short week; we had two days of school. Wednesday there was no school in honor of Remembrance Day and Thursday/ Friday no school because of parent teacher interviews.
On Monday, we had 10 children because a lot of the students were either staying home because of the weather or because of the COVID case. There is ups and downs to having smaller numbers of students, the upside is in most cases you can give the students more one on one support they may need but the downside is that students who are not there do not receive the support and fall behind in classroom work. Tuesday morning we had our Remembrance day ceremony; and I would say most of the students had remembered the poem with little help and without reading. I am excited to have three extra days off this week to spend sometime with my family; although I will miss the students during our break. Week Nine11/6/2020 This week was a tame week compared to the week before when our focus was on Halloween.
This week the students started learning about Remembrance Day in honor of Remembrance day on November 11. We had to prepare them for our ceremony that we are having on the 10th of November. The students created a poppy using their handprints, and then we attached a short poem on the back of the poppy. We practiced the poem about four times this week and I communicated with the parents to practice with their student at home. We hope that the students will have it memorized by Tuesday morning so we can take a group video of the students saying the poem while holding their poppies. We will continue to practice on Monday with the students. We have a couple students who haven't been attending school because of the rise of cases in Yorkton. This is very difficult when it comes to assessing the students and getting them extra help when they need because this all relies on student attendance. For many students this term we won't be able to assess them and we will have to write we have nothing to access the students on this term. We have many students who we know need the extra help but because they have poor attendance it is extremely hard to get them the help. Week 810/30/2020 This week is themed around Halloween because this Saturday is Halloween. Around the school; we have themed days each day. Monday was an inservice so no students were at school. On Tuesday we had crazy hair day; I wore pigtails with green/orange pipe cleaners in it and eyeballs stuck with tape. Wednesday was Halloween hat day; I don't have any special Halloween hats so I wore a baseball cap. On Thursday it was Dr. Brass colour day so I wore a red shirt and black pants. Today it was orange and black day so I wore an orange shirt and black pants.
Also during the week we have candy jar guess, students could guess how many candy were in the jar for 0.25 cents. We also had a colour page contest where students could colour pictures and enter to win the contest; the winners would be announced later today. Then there was the scary writing contest but our kids couldn't participate in that. Each activity or themed day that the students participated in earned us a point for our classroom towards a pizza party. I learnt I am very competitive in the contest. Not only was the whole school celebrating Halloween but in our classroom we themed activities around Halloween. This helps get the students motivated to learn during an exciting time for them. For example, in Math class we were doing ten frames so we used pumpkin as our dots. In rhyming we did rhyming Halloween words like bat and cat. Then in Arts ed we used a pumpkin template to learn about shapes. I think this made the students more excited to learn because they are all very excited for Halloween. Instead of just doing fun activities we used the students excitement to our advantage. I am hoping we win the pizza party; because my students deserve a special prize! Week Seven10/19/2020 The last two weeks I was full time teaching; this week I have handed the teaching back to Mrs. Badowich. It feels weird to be back to observing her teaching and being more of a support for the students instead of direct teaching.
One Monday we had a full classroom; we still had some students missing but our classroom was packed and full with 18 students. It makes me very nervous with the growing numbers of Covid in Saskatchewan and especially in our region. In our classroom is it impossible for us to properly social distance within our classroom. Since the start of the school year we haven't had a full classroom so the risk of Covid hadn't had that much of an impact but with students returning to school and our class size growing I begin to understand the worries of other teachers surrounding keeping Covid out of the classroom. We had full class this week so we knew we needed to get a lot of work done so when the students missed more school days they were caught up from before they left. We focused on word rhymes and ten frames this week. We also reviewed in math every day of ways to represent numbers which I think is a good idea because it helps the students to review previous knowledge. It also gives the teacher a glance at what needs to be reviewed because the students still don't have a grasp on it. I noticed this week that the students need more practice on tally marks. I am starting to unit plan this week; it made me think of how much planning will have to be done when I have my own classroom. Internship planning is nothing compared to having my own classroom. That is one thing that I am worried for when I have my own classroom. So far unit planning has been easy and it has been easy thinking of exciting activities for the students to learn. One struggle I have had is planning activities along with assessment; working on assessment is one of my feedback notes. Sometimes I have an activity but then I can't come up with a clear form of assessment that the students would understand. Week Six10/16/2020 Almost at the half way mark for internship; its hard to find things to write about in my weekly blog posts.
This week we had picture day; something from this I learnt was when the routine gets changed some students act out more. This shows me that routines are needed and in order to support the students that need it having a visual schedule in the classroom is very beneficial for them. It was also a long weekend the past weekend; I learnt how much one day of school off impacts the students and their learning. In one day the students may begin to understand the desired outcomes. Another factor that is important is parent support and what they do at home with their student. Such as one student was struggling grasping numbers so we requested that the parents work on it at home with him. He now has a pretty good understanding of numbers 0-10 and can print them correctly. Missing days of school impact a student a lot as they missed important lessons and outcomes. They might be able to catch on fast but for the students that need lots of support it may become very difficult to catch them up. We had six students return to school this week who had missed last week; they had been introduced to numbers but the lessons were not fully around numeracy so we had to start from the beginning with them. We had three teachers in the room; which made this easy but I could never imagine how it would go if there was only me. AuthorMy Internship is at Dr. Brass Elementary School Archives
December 2020
Categories |