This page will contain blog updates relating to the learning that is taking place within my ten-week practicum class. I will be updating this page every Friday evening to display some of the activities that have been completed throughout the week.

Update 1: Observation Week!

Before starting practicum I spent a week integrating myself into the classroom community and getting to know each student. This has allowed me to make connections and become accustomed to the activities of the classroom. I found this week to be really exciting and helpful to learn a bit about everyone and their interests. One of the highlights of the week was watching the students build a house during play centres. Seeing their enthusiasm to create was really neat! I also really enjoyed how the students were developing their writing skills to create juicy sentences. They were very creative in developing descriptions and extending their work to include more details. A wonderful week!

Week 1 of Teaching!

This week I began to teach lessons with your children! We started the story elements unit and reviewed addition to 20. The elements of the story unit began with the students identifying the beginning, middle, and end of the stories! They created drawings to indicate which events dictated these areas of the storybook. Then they were introduced to character traits. Moving into next week, students will be learning about how to sequence events. The grade 2’s will also be introduced to addition concepts to 100, while grade 1’s will be strengthening their skills of addition to 20. It was a wonderful week and I am eager to move into full-time teaching!

Week 2!

This week the students created their community fish! These were based on the story “Rainbow Fish.” The students then painted their fish. We turned this into a community activity as they were then asked to keep one piece for themselves and trade the other pieces with their classmates. This demonstrated a healthy reciprocal relationship with the example of giving as much as you are taking. I found this activity to be effective for the students as they demonstrated polite “May we please trade?” and being more than willing to help their classmates find someone to trade with. What kind young community members! A great week!

Week 3!

This week was so much fun! The students and I began to develop our skills in soccer and I was impressed by the tricks that they were able to pick up. While teaching basic soccer skills such as controlling the ball and moving with it by the feet, I also learned from one of the learners how to drop the ball to your foot and bounce it back up. What a fun lesson! We have also been learning about setting, conflict, and solutions. Now we are moving into week 4, and a quick reminder:

• February 24th (Wednesday) will be Kindness Day, please send your child to school with a pink shirt to symbolize that we value kindness!
• February 25th (Thursday) will be the hundredth day of school! An exciting time! Please try to send your child to school with a Ziplock bag of any 100 items you may have at home. We will be comparing what the sizes are of different items in bundles of 100. We will also be having math stations this day that will be exciting and different!

I can’t wait for us all to experience this next week, learning and building our skills together.

Week 4

This week we had a lot of fun activities! It was Kindness Day, or Anti-Bullying Day on Wednesday. In honour of this, the students developed this thought web on what it means to be kind within our school community. We have such creative and kind students in our class, a real strength that I see from them each day! Our classroom is filled with students who are accepting, forgiving, and always welcoming to each other in many different circumstances.

For this week, we also had our 100’s Day celebration in class! During this, students brought to school a Ziplock bag of 100 items. We compared the sizes of these different items to conclude that if one item is slightly bigger than another item, 100 of these items can be really different once they are grouped! We also have a wonderful Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies lesson where the students rotated through stations to complete a series of challenges. They built towers of 100 cups, they built LEGO structures from 100 bricks and set up 100 dominoes. What a blast this week was overall!

Week 5

During this week I introduced the months of the year in French. It was so much fun to see how some of the students loved incorporating this vocabulary within their “Months of the Year” calendar song. Some have continued pursuing this song throughout the week on their own time, such as during Play Centres, or while waiting for their friends to join them on the carpet. This was a real treat to see!

We have also been continuing to work on our skills in jumping rope and developing our soccer skills. It has been a fun and exciting week!

Week 6

This week we began an author study for Mo Willems. These stories are funny and enjoyable to the students as Gerald and Piggie have such a sweet friendship with plenty of relatable adventures. This was a great opportunity to teach about speech versus thought bubbles, noticing also how Willems uses colour coordinated bubbles to indicate which character is speaking. The students completed a directed drawing of our friend Gerald, and they have turned out great! Each student put their own spin on the character with their facial expression and matched this with what he was saying in the speech bubble.

We also finished our Water Cycle unit this week, with only some catch-up work to complete next week. They are finishing up their Water Cycle diagrams and Water Protection posters this upcoming Thursday.

For next week we have plenty of fun activities planned to take our class into Spring Break!

• Tuesday we have an Easter Bunny craft with the Aboriginal Education worker
• Wednesday we will be doing a directed drawing of a leprechaun for St. Patrick’s Day!
• Thursday we will be doing an Easter Chick craft
• Friday will be our in-class party! We will be watching Hop to celebrate that Easter is coming!

I’m really looking forward to this final week of full-time teaching. This week has so many special activities planned to keep the learners engaged. Happy weekend everyone!

Week 7

This week was my final week of full-time teaching! Leading into spring break, we did some crafts to celebrate the special days! For St. Patrick’s Day, we did a directed drawing of a leprechaun puppet. This was so much fun and everyone’s ended up being so unique! Loved this! Then, Thursday we did an Easter scene with fingerpainted bunnies and Easter eggs. Some of the learners found other creative ways to add details to their art. A few students chose to add rainbows, some added bushes, and one even made an Easter bear! I loved seeing their creative side!

This week we also focused on finishing up our math writing booklets. The kids were very proud of their progress and even requested to work on it during choice times, such as during Play Centres and Good Morning Tubs! I am very proud of the class for working so hard to complete their jobs this week. Great work, friends!

Week 8 and 9

It is spring break! See you on April 6th!

Week 10

This was my final week within my class at Vanway. I had a wonderful experience and I learned so much from the classroom teacher. This week we worked on relearning some of the classroom routines that may have been forgotten over the break, and had some fun while getting back into the groove of being in school. What a great time I had with this class! Thank you for all of the support, Vanway staff and students! I am wishing great things going forward!