Portfolio Share

As previously mentioned, we met with fellow LifeWorkers and other people who had helped us through the practicum today. We all had an opportunity to share everything we had done throughout the year. Many people make scrapbooks as their portfolios, some did powerpoints, one person even made a puzzle! This blog is my portfolio. Here is a picture of a few of us from today and some of the treats!

 

After Our Year...

We have been together since January. This picture is from that first semester and I think we look so young! My ideas about education have changed constantly throughout this time. As of today, here is my philosophy:

 

 

My Credo

1.       I believe that there is no correct way to teach, therefore I will utilize the expertise of the staff and students to guide me in my lesson planning and I will not be too discouraged when lessons are “good” for one class and “ineffective” for another.

2.       I believe in literacy, therefore books will be a huge part of my classroom.

3.       I believe in the community, therefore I want to keep my classroom open to families, other classes, community events, etc. I want learning to come from many sources and for families to feel included in their child’s learning.

4.       I believe in a fun classroom, therefore I will do everything I can to change my teaching style to accommodate individuals. I want to make time for silliness and play, no matter the age I am teaching. I want students to leave the day excited to come back for the next.

5.       I believe in keeping a safe and respectful classroom for all individuals, therefore I will work with the students to create a charter that is reflective of the needs of themselves, the school, their families and the community. I will be a clear role model and not accept acts of injustice and meanness in the classroom.

6.       I believe in active learning, therefore I want to create opportunities for students to get up and move around, go outside, and use their hands.

7.       I believe in healthy living, therefore I will work to incorporate nutrition and exercise into my classroom when possible.

Portfolio Share!

Tomorrow we will be sharing our portfolios with our LifeWork group and people who have helped us get through the program. It is very exciting to be at this point!

 

Still Missing them! Really Excited to Finish!

It has been one week since I finished my practicum and I am missing my students so much! They were so sweet to me (especially on my last day)! We finish the program December 5th. Until then we are working as a LifeWorks group again at SFU. It is nice to see LifeWorkers again and talk about all of our struggles and successes. Most of us haven't had an opportunity to see each other all semester! This week we are learning about the process of applying for jobs, creating resumes and cover letters, learning about other districts, taking workshops, and celebrating!

 

Yesterday we visited Senator Reid Elementary in Surrey and listened to the principal and a special education expert present. The school itself was very interesting to visit. I took a lot of pictures of the artwork on the walls so that I can use the ideas in my own classroom one day!

Phase Out! Last Day!

As I was phasing out at the end of November, Maillard Middle was getting into full swing. I was working with my SA to write the first report cards of the year. The winter dance was happening on my last week at the school. All of the student teachers in the school were working extra hard to get everything wrapped up before we left. I was already starting to miss the students and I hadn't even left yet! Sadly, I got sick in my last week of the practicum and missed a couple days of school. However, while I was gone the students and my SA were planning a surprise good-bye party and very thoughtful cards! I am so lucky to have been placed with this class!

 

Our attempt at a class photo on my last day. This was honestly the best one we could get! My SA is playfully making fun of me because I had been sick.

 

Field Trip!

I planned my first ever field trip near the end of my practicum. I wanted to do something fun with my class that could tie into my favourite units (science and social studies). My SA gave me some ideas of what I could do and I decided to go to the Fraser River Discovery Centre and the Samson V Maritime Museum at the New Westminster Quay. It was a lot of planning, but the day turned out amazing. The weather cooperated perfectly, the students were well-behaved and engaged (both places complimented them), and everything ran smoothly. I am so happy that I was able to fit this into my practicum! Unfortunately I need to blur out students faces in the photos for safety purposes, but you can still see the idea of what we did on the field trip.

 

Portland, Oregon

In November Coquitlam scheduled a pro-day with a non-instructional day. Most of the staff at our school (and other Coquitlam Middle schools) took advantage of this by travelling to Portland, Oregon for a huge middle school conference. It is called the conference for American Middle Level Educators (AMLE). Experts from all over North America were at this conference presenting new ideas, theories, philosophies, and techniques about teaching specifically to the middle school age. It was amazing! There were teachers from all over just there to learn new ways to teach middle school! Very inspiring! I wasn't able to get many pictures from the actual conference but I did get some pictures of all of us teachers bonding and having a great time while we were there!

 

 

Beautiful Artwork at the convention centre. Poppies I believe?

A group of us went to a Portland Trailblazers game while we were there. My first NBA game!

One of the workshops I went to. This one was on student engagement.

 



A group shot of all the Maillard teachers in Portland.

Voodoo Doughnuts!

I thought it was cool that a band at a Portland pub had a Vancouver Whitcaps scarf behind them.

Remembrance Day

 

Right after Halloween we continued with our short stories unit but started to focus on Remembrance stories (whereas we had previously been working on scary stories). Along with our short stories unit I had the students write letters to either a veteran or a soldier. They had the choice. We did two rough copies and a good copy before putting them into envelopes. I was very happy with the way they turned out. My SA asked me to choose two students to read their letters out at the Remembrance Day assembly. I was incredibly proud of the students that read. They both did an amazing job. All of the letters turned out to be very creative and thoughtful. We sent them Mid-November and the students are waiting to see if they will hear back.

 

Halloween Safety

 

For my lessons I used Google Docs a lot. I liked it because it was similar to powerpoint but even easier to use. For my Halloween safety lesson I used this picture above to start off my lesson. I also had a student secretly dress up in an "unsafe" costume to demonstrate to the class why it was unsafe to wear. It was a funny lesson and the students enjoyed it too.

Halloween/Day of the Dead

 

For Halloween I wanted to do something a bit different and incorporate a different culture into my art unit. I decided to focus on Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead). I gave a bit of history and had the students create Halloween masks with this theme.

PSA Professional Development Day

October 19 was a Provincial Professional Development Day. On this particular pro-d day teachers are supposed to choose their specialty and go get updated in new theories and methods. Since I don't really have a specialty yet and I really enjoy social studies I chose to go to the social studies specialist conference. I went to three presentations.

1) How and why unions were created. How to teach about unions.

2) Homelessness and how to teach about it. This presentation was interesting because they had a homeless man and a formerly homeless woman speak about their experiences.

3) Keynote speaker: Romeo Dellaire. He is a very famous Canadian. He was in the army and refused to leave Rwanda when the World pulled out and let genocide happen. He was a very motivational and inspirational speaker about what is morally right and how we should influence our students to take care of the world.

Fall Art

My very first official art project with the students was to do with Fall leaves and Fall colours. We first traced out leaves with a pencil. Then we outlined those tracings with white glue. After the glue was dry we had a 3D effect for the lines of the leaf. We painted over that with mainly Fall colours and created a very vibrant bulletin board that I am quite proud of!

I wonder...

By mid-October I was starting to feel comfortable as the full time teacher. It was still stressful, and it was still very long hours, but I was starting to feel like the students respected me and we had built some great relationships. One of my favourite things that I implemented into the classroom were questions boxes (I wish I had pictures). I had two boxes. One was labelled: "I wonder..." and students were able to ask a question about anything they wanted. Sometimes they were about me, sometimes they were about the curriculum, and sometimes they were completely random. I always tried to find out the answers to the best of my ability. I answered them once a week and it was always a fun part of the day. The second box was labelled: "I wish we could learn about..." and the students were able to give me ideas for lessons. It was great! Students can be very creative! I actually got some really cool ideas from them! Every time I taught a lesson someone had suggested, I made sure to tell them. This usually made them more interested.

Student Question: What is the difference between different types of salmon?

Sockeye

Coho

Classroom Management

After my week one fiasco I knew I needed to figure out my classroom management strategies. On the weekend I spent time scouring the internet for ideas. I came across one that I liked and decided that I needed to try it.

My SA had originally been using a points system in the class to maintain classroom behaviour but it wasn't working for me because I wasn't clear on what constituted a good point or a bad point. Also, when I gave students "bad" points, they would sometimes tell me they didn't care. Above is a picture of the template I started to use in my classroom instead (I decided to write it on the board instead of using the paper version). If I moved a student up on the chart they (or the class) would be rewarded. If I moved them down, there were consequences. It was not perfect, but it worked for me and it made my practicum go way better because I was in charge of the terms and I understood them best. This made the classroom mine. The students were finally getting managed in an effective way. Both my SA and FA noticed huge improvements in my "teacher presence". 

Reggio Emilia

On October 5th Coquitlam had a non-instructional day so I went to observe a classroom in a Burnaby school. I had just had a very stressful week and it was an amazing pick-me-up. The school I went to based it's primary practices on the ideas of the Reggio Emila philosophy (which is based on discovery, and self-guided curriculum). I was happy to find out that I would be observing a Kindergarten class! It was so nice to be around the little ones again!
The school itself was very community based and had a lot of communal open space which was set to look very natualistic. The atomosphere of the school was very welcoming.

Full Immersion: My Worst Week Teaching!

October 1st was when I needed to start full immersion. I was becoming the full time teacher, doing 80-100% of the planning, prepping, lessons, behaviour management, marking, and everything to do with SFU. My SA did not need to be in the room when I was teaching, in fact he was encouraged to leave so that I could get the full experience.
My first week was a nightmare. I was underprepared for the amount of work that was required, my lessons were not prepped enough, my formal observations all went bad, and I did not have behaviour management under control. That week, I considered quitting.
On the Wednesday of that week my SA had to go to a morning meeting, so there needed to be a TOC in the class as the official person in charge, but I was still running the room. She could see clearly that I did not have the class under control. She told me that all of my SA's strategies that I had adopted were not working and I needed to figure it out. I was embarrassed. Also, it was a wake-up call that I needed to get into gear and figure things out. Luckily for me, two nice things happened that week that kept me going.

1) October 4th was World Teacher's Day (never heard of it) and our administrators came to our classes to give us coffee, treats, and a cute little towel cupcake.

2) Coquitlam had a non-instructional Day on the 5th. This gave me an opportunity to clear my head and to observe a different school in Burnaby (more on that in the next post).

I am so glad that I pushed through because the weeks after that one were amazing.

Towel Cupcake!

My Desk was so messy that week!

Winding Up September

By the last week of September I was teaching at about 60%. My lessons had been going well and my formal observations had been going well, but my classroom management was still a little shaky. My SA informed me that I was "too nice". I was nervous about starting my full immersion, but up until now everything had been going relatively smooth so I felt like I could do it. The last week of September ended well with an inspiring Terry Fox assesembly and run (put together by my SA).

Terrariums!

By far, my favourite lessons to teach were the ones where we built terrariums. A terrarium is a self-sustaining ecosystem. It was my favourite way to wind up a unit because it was very hands-on and the students were excited and engaged throughout the lessons leading up to it and the lesson where we actually put them together.
There was a LOT of prep involved, but it was definitely worth it.