My Internship Experience
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!
0 Comments
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. Week Five10/9/2020 This week my huge learning was about students need for breaks sometimes. I have one student in particular that gets tired of doing work and then tends to not accomplish anything else. This would make me stress out because then he would act out and wouldn't be learning that day. But I learned that if I give him a couple minutes to put his head down (when he's tired), or to do something else that he enjoys that when his couple minutes are up he will get back to doing the activity with the class.
I also went home Wednesday really stressed out because a lot of the class wasn't catching onto letters and letter sounds or to numbers. Which made it difficult to move on to anything else and for the students who were succeeding in the class. Thursday I came in with a fresh look on things, I knew I needed to stay calm and if something wasn't working for the students I had to keep trying something else and repetition was really helpful. Getting worked up over it wasn't going to help the students catch on any faster so I needed to take it slower and keep changing activities so that the students had breaks from them. We had very low number's this week, we are hoping next week our students start to return. It was a long week but I am very thankful for the learning opportunities, this isn't something I had experienced before. In other classes usually there is a couple students who struggle with the outcomes but in this class majority of the students do. Which isn't the students fault, I just have to find different ways that the students can learn. I am ready for a well needed long weekend break. Week Four10/2/2020 I left monday around 12:00 and did not return back to school. I was not feeling well, needed to confirm I didn't have COVID through testing
AuthorMy Internship is at Dr. Brass Elementary School Archives
December 2020
Categories |