This first week has been so hectic. I have jumped right into teaching and interacting with the students. The class is fantastic. The kids are so well behaved that classroom management is a breeze. The class split evenly, there are ten grade ones and ten grade twos. I was lucky that my AT let me jump right in and start teaching. Here are a few of the things that I planned.
My AT has let me plan a full geometry lesson. We will be starting with 2-D shapes and then look at 3-D shapes. I have started by planning a unit on 3-D shapes. We are hoping to start the lesson next week. My first lesson is about teaching students the terminology they will need for the rest of the unit. We will be looking at the words: one-dimensional, two-dimensional, three-dimensional, vertex, side and all of the attributes of each shape. For the kids that are finished early I came by these great tanagram puzzles. They are on this page. The idea is that kids use tanagram shapes to create other shapes. For example "Create a triangle using one hexagon and three triangles". It challenges the kids to use some program solving skills.
The other lesson that I planned this week was an art lesson. I found the ideas here and here. I had planned on having the kids have a choice of making a bunny or a chick. I was unsure how the kids motor skills are so I decided to cut out the outline out for them. Luckily, the outline for both the chick and the rabbit were both ovals. I used the same template and just changed colours. I also cut out the pieces for the bunny to make have a guide for the kids to follow. I went to Walmart and bought a few Easter decorations, or they could use construction paper to cut out. Here are my exemplars that I created. The other fun treat I did was make the Easter Pillsbury chick and bunny cookies. Unfortunately, there were so many students away this week that my AT suggested to push the lesson until Monday when more kids can participate.
My favourite thing that my AT uses is his RESPECT chart. That is the the philosophy of classroom management in the classroom. My AT has an anchor chart where each letter of respect stands for a different thing. R: right to pass, E: Eyes, ears and heart for listening, S: Safety, P: Prepared, E: everyone tries their best, c: Care for Classroom/School, T: Treat others how you want to be treated. I really thought that there would be a lot for fighting and tattle tailing. I was surprised to find that that hardest one for the students is Care for the Classroom and school. The students just don't realize what they are doing and forget to do a lot of things.
This week we also had a staff meeting this week. I was lucky enough to be allowed to sit in and participate. The topic of the staff meeting was informing teachers about a pro-pro model. It is used instead of the pro-con model that is usually used to discuss the difference between two topics. The principal modeled an example which was the pros of allowing teachers to pick which grade they would like to teach versus the administration picking which grades teachers would teaching. We broke each category down into sub categories. Ours were the benefits for students, parents and administrators. The staff brainstormed different pros for each. The most important step is to highlight the strongest points and discuss, One of the intermediate teachers used this model to get the students input on the layout of the class. The teacher was unhappy with groups of four and the students were unhappy with groups of two. She mentioned that they came up with a solution that she had never tried before. The class also considered a girl that used a walker when designing the classroom. They narrowed down the choices as a class and they voted.
Overall this has been a fantastic week! With a lot of the kids on March Break the class has had around 15 students ever day. This has been an easy way to transition into my first week. Later on today my AT and I will be sitting down to plan out the next week. Next week is a short week due to it being Easter weekend next week.