Week 4 is done!!! Whoot Whoot Whoot!!! We did it!

It's kind of hard to believe it's all over - maybe a little anti-climactic.  It has been a very busy week, lots of late nights, not enough sleep - but I got it all done - finished all my assessments for, as and of learning - even squeezed in a community circle with each of my 5 classes.

So much has happened this week, I don't know where to start or end :)

We started off this week using the questions the students put up on the learning wall as our starting point.  They worked in small groups each with one of the questions and putting down whatever they knew about it (and of course I researched all of the questions and made sure I had found whatever I could to add to the discussion, if needed).  I am really impressed I have to say with how mature these kids are.  The books that we had dramatized the week before had a lot of heavy issues - substance abuse, aboriginal issues, racism, Rwanda, post traumatic stress disorder, ...

I also wanted to introduce the students to the four directions website (and also get my hands on some technology for once); and a website for an organization called "mindfulness without borders" that my friend, Gary Diggins, does work for - and through that goes to several African countries to work with youth who have experienced trauma and violence through war - Rwanda, Uganda, ...  They collaborate with another organization called "teachers without borders" and usually work with students.

In my grade 7/8 and grade 8 English classes, my friend - Gary - came to talk to them about his work in Rwanda.  We finished reading the book (sort of - they dramatized parts of the book for each other, so that together as a class, we "watched" the whole book) - "Shattered" by Eric Walters, that talks a lot about Rwanda.  For many of them, they had no idea about what happened there.  We had a pretty awesome community circle with him.  The kids were so into it.  Gary is a musician as well. and he infuses his music in this work.  He played a really cool instrument for the students called a "Hung" - and it's beautiful and relaxing and he led us through a meditation similar to what he does with high school students in Rwanda.  The students loved it, and he also played some African percussion and got me to improvise.  We passed around a beautiful rock from rwanda and talked about where we were at in that moment and then he told us stories of Rwanda, the history, what it is like now, and how the current president has created a very inclusive government with Hutus and Tutsis, and how it has the highest percentage women in government in the world.  It was truly inspiring.  I'm so glad that worked.

The other classes I have (my core 4/5 and 5/6 french classes) were preparing all week to do a performance for each other on Friday (today).  I barely talked to the principal until now, and I'm quite shy (believe it or not) so I wasn't sure how to approach her or how to see if she might come and watch me teach - and then I came up with a brilliant idea which worked perfectly, if I do say so myself.  The kids have these main lesson books where we wrote the poem that I have been teaching them (a winter poem - it was kind of crazy considering it got so warm for a while there - in hindsight, I would have picked a spring poem - but hindsight is 20/20, right?) and we write out the verbs we're working on, and we draw pictures that are related to whatever we wrote.  Anyway, as with any class, there are those kids who finish early, and those kids who take a very very long time to finish.  I wanted to make sure that everyone was able to finish by the end of practicum - so I didn't assign any more for the book at the end of last week - and I brought in some nice paper to get the kids who were already done everything to make posters for our plays that they learned; our poems; and our songs.  I also always had beautiful crayons and coloured pencils that the kids LOVED to use.  Anyway, my brilliant plan was to get some of my students to make an official invitation for the principal and vice principal inviting them to our show.  Some of the kids are incredibly artistic and they made very beautiful invitations.  Then I got the kids to hand deliver the invitations.  It worked - both the principal and vice principal came to the show.  I also put up all the beautiful posters that the kids had made.  We already had the costumes all planned out for both plays (grade 4/5 did "Le soleil et le vent - une fable d'Aesop" - and I fingerknitted their costumes - just cute little crowns for them to wear to identify which character they were - yellow for the suns, purply/blue for the wind, light blue for the people (and they also had scarves); and dark blue for the narrators).  They got to keep the fingerknitting as a gift from me after the play.  The grade 5/6 did a story about 3 little boys & 2 sorcerers (a boy and a girl) and several other characters including 3 dogs, 2 zebras, 2 sticks, 3 people playing fire and 3 people playing water - the play was called "Salem, Giancarlo, Nazarino et les sorciers".  All the kids had the poems, their lines and the songs memorized.  I have to say, it looked pretty impressive and I finally made some kind of a connection with the principal (yay!).

I'm so happy to be home now - just watched a movie with my kids - maybe I'll put another one on, make some popcorn, cuddle with my babies & evenutally fall asleep.

Hope whoever might read this had an AWESOME practicum.  Pat yourselves on the back for having finished!  Look forward to seeing y'all and catching up.

p.s. forgot to add that I stole Steven's m cubed sheet (actually he sent it to me) and got the kids to write the most memorable moment - and explained I wanted feedback from them on things I could improve as a teacher, or things I did well.  I haven't looked at any yet.  Maybe I'll do that tonight to unwind.  Oh and I gave all my kids a CD - they were really cute and happy that I did that - and they lined up to get me to autograph them.  Cuties!

Week 3 - English unit has begun

So I'm halfway through my English unit plan and so far so good.  I accomplished what I was hoping to accomplish and I started my learning wall.  I had no idea how that was going to go.  I asked the children to put up a post it note with a question about their novels, or vocabulary from their novel, or answer a question that they found on the board.  I was really impressed with some of the questions that they had, as well as with some of the answers they were able to answer.  I don't know the answers to all of the questions, which is pretty cool because we'll all be learning something together.  I think I will use the learning wall as a way to get into the issues that have come up from the book, because it is a way of responding to what the students are interested in, is directly related to the novels that we are reading, that will make them more engaged/interested in what we are learning.

I'm pretty exhausted from teaching 100% of the classes this last week.  All I could do on Friday when I got home was to eat dinner, put on a movie for my kids, and sleep until Saturday.  I have to teach 100%, for one more week, and I just feel so very wiped.  I don't know how teachers do it for the whole year.  I am really looking forward to a special guest that I have arranged to come and talk to my class on Thursday.  One of the novels we are reading is called "Shattered" by Eric Walters, and it talks a lot about what happened in Rwanda.  I have a friend who does work there, and he will come in to talk to the kids about what it's like in Rwanda and what is happening now.  I think it'll be really interesting for the kids, and great to get to talk to someone who has been there.  They have a lot of questions about why the genocide happened, and the history.

I've already done the first assessment for the English unit - an oral assessment of dramatic presentations the kids gave in groups for specific chapters in the book.  They didn't know what happened before their chapters or what happened after.  Each group went in order, so that over 2 days, the kids knew the complete story of the book.  While the class watched the presentation, my AT suggested I give the kids a handout to take notes about what was happening, to keep them engaged while watching by giving them something to do; and to make sure that they finished the 2 days knowing the whole story.  We used "Freytag's Triangle" for our handouts - Freytag is someone who said that every narrative has 5 parts: The exposition (introduction), rising action, climax, denouement (falling action), and conclusion.

My next assessment piece is a reflection journal that the children will submit based on what they thought about the story.  There are 6 sections - general response, asking questions, making inferences, making connections, making predictions, and determining importance.  I went through each section with them, and I modeled both of those activities before I had the children do them.  To model the dramatic presentatino, I did a monologue of 2 of the characters to introduce chapter 1 of each book (the grade 7's had one book and the grade 8's had another book.)  I realize in hindsight I didn't do a great job of modeling what I wanted.  I should have either improvised my monologue, making sure I knew the important points I wanted to get across; or I should have memorized my monologues.  Instead, I read them (with as much drama and acting and feeling as I could - but I was still stuck to the page).  I did tell the groups that I didn't want them to be reading but wanted a dramatic interpretation, and some of the groups really delivered, but others did basically read a script, and I do feel my modeling of it was probably a big part of why they did it that way.  And to model the reflection journals, I filled one out and then typed it out so that the students could see what kinds of things I put down for each category, if they were unsure of what to do.

Next week, the last assignment that will be do will be to write a personal opinion paper about one of the issues we discuss from the novels (on Monday we'll talk about poverty and on Tuesday we'll talk about racism).  I am going to give them Wednesday in class to write their papers and to give them a chance to show me their work before Thursday morning when it is due - so that they can get some feedback before I am actually marking it for a mark.  Thursday, as I mentioned, my friend will come in to talk to the grade 8's about Rwanda, and the grade 7's will have a free class because one of the younger grades needs an "older class" to interview, and my AT offered our grade 7's.  Friday, I will give everyone back their work, and anyone who had to miss the dramatic demonstration will present their personal opinion papers orally, as an alternate oral assessment.

One more week.  Hope I survive it!  Look forward to getting back to OISE.

Week 2 is done and March Break is here - yay!!

So even though I haven't started my unit plan in English which is what I'm most worried about, I found week 2 very stressful trying to get ready for it.  There was another student teacher in my class for our 1st 2 weeks of practicum and she was teaching the english classes (which gave me a chance to watch her, and also get ready for my 2 week unit plan which begins after March Break).  My teacher wanted me to have a package ready for my English students before March Break so that we wouldn't waste any time when we all returned.  For those of you who did TRIBES training, I took one of the activities and decided that would be the focus of my first week with them - "novel in an hour".  But instead of doing that, I am doing it over the first week.  I picked 2 novels - one for my grade 7's and one for my grade 8's - I put them in groups of 3 to 5 students, and assigned each group a few chapters to ready (anywhere from 2 to 6 chapters).  They will not know what happens before their specific chapters, and they won't know what happens after, either.  I assigned Chapter 1 to myself (of each book) so I can demonstrate on Monday what I expect them to do - which is to figure out how they can dramatize/present their chapters to the class.  Then they will have Tuesday and Wednesday  to work on it in their groups.  And on Thursday and Friday, the groups will each present their respective chapters in the correct order, so that we can "watch" the book and know the whole story.  And I will be giving them an oral assessment based on those presentations.  I have also made little reflection journals for them, so that as they are watching the groups, if they have a response, or a connection to something, they can make reflections.  They can also write up their reflections after the fact.  Their reflection journals will be due on Monday (of my 2nd week of the novel study).

Then on week 2, on Monday, we will do an overview of each novel to sum it all up, and then the next 3 days we will look at various issues from the novels, having class discussions and activities (it's a bit vague now because I haven't actually made the lesson plans yet, but it is one of the many things I plan to accomplish over march break - as well as make the rubrics, and my dramatizations of the chapter 1's; work on my math performance, and catch up with my life at home ;).  The novel I am doing with the Grade 8's is called "Shattered" and it deals with issues of poverty, substance abuse, racism, Canadian History (one of the main characters is a homeless man who was in a Canadian Peacekeeper in Rwanda and who witnessed the genocide).  I am having a guest speaker come in on Thursday of that week - he is  a friend, but he also does work in Rwanda to try to help people heal from what happened there during the genocide.  The last assessment I'll be doing with the kids is a personal opinion paper where they can write a personal response either to the novel that they "watched" or to one or more of the issues that we looked at in the 2nd week.  And if anyone had to miss the oral presentation, they will present their personal opinion paper orally in the last couple of days.

It took me literally all of this past week to get their packages together (photocopying the chapters for each group; photocopying and collating the reflection journals; organizing who went in what group; getting the packages to all of the students before they left for March Break; finding out in the last day or 2 that some people would miss part of the unit and having to figure out alternate assignments for them; missing some kids who left early for march break, etc etc etc.  It was really a race against time and I found it very stressful.

My French classes, on the other hand, which I started teaching during the step days, are feeling really good and I really feel like I'm in my element.  I've assigned the parts for the plays that we are going to perform in week 4; and the students are pretty excited about it.  I'm going to work on costumes over march break (oh yeah, one other thing I plan to do over march break); and I'm also going to make a trip to staples to get my supplies for the learning wall (which will be on the 2 week novel study I'll be doing with the kids).  I just want to survive the 2 weeks after march break!!  God help me :)

I'll keep you posted, of course!

Practicum 2, Week 1

Week 1 went pretty well, considering my youngest little guy at home (Janos) got some kind of stomach flu and was vomiting for the last 3 days.  I think he is getting through it, though and hopefully he'll keep getting better and better.  I taught the grade 4/5, and 5/6 core French classes in the afternoons.  In the last 2 STEP days, I already started teaching them, and used that opportunity to do my Art Lesson Assignment - of course I chose to do finger knitting - which they loved.  Now whenever they see me, they ask if they get to do fingerknitting - but we have many other things to work on.  I decided that for both classes, I would work on a story, a round (a song), and a winter poem that they would be able to perform by week 4.  My AT has been really good at helping me figure out how I'm going to asses them.  I'm also learning how to finally make rubrics (I have to admit, I've been avoiding them all year.)  First I tried using rubric builder dot com - but my AT told me it's for high school - and it should be much more simple so the students understand it.  But it put me in the right direction.  I decided to give them a quiz once per week where we would focus on one verb they are supposed to know.  I started with the verb "avoir" - I reviewed it every single day with the kids - both on the board - so they could see it written; and I got them to write it out, and we said it out loud.  But still 7 of the 21 or 22 kids in each class got none of the answers correct - where others got more than 100% (because I gave a couple of bonus questions).  I made a note of the students who got 0, so that I can make sure to work with them more closely.  One suggestion my AT had, was to put "avoir" on the next quiz, as well as the next verb, and make sure that I work with those students to make sure they get it.  I thought about it, though, and I think what I will do is make the quizzes not worth very much.  There is another written assessment I'll be doing, which is a beautiful main lesson book.  I made the book for them (stapled together about 10 pages of the cheap photocopy paper), and I drew lines on every other page, and left the alternate pages blank for illustrations.  In the main lesson book, I get them to write out things we are working on (we started with the winter poem) and then illustrate it.  I brought in my beautiful coloured pencils and crayons and the kids LOVE using them (I told them they can also use their own).  I think I'll make that worth 80% of their written assessment, and the quizzes will be a total of 20% (there will be 3 in total).  And for their oral assessment, Serge gave me a good idea, when he came to supervise my teaching last week - to keep a checklist so that I can see who is answering all the questions, and that way, I balance it because I see on my list, who isn't talking at all (and so I don't necessarily know if they are getting what we are talking about).  The other part of the oral mark will be their performance of the poem, story and song in week 4. I decided that the way I will assess it, is that in my week 4, We will spend the whole week getting ready for the performance (no quizzes that week), so I will try to run through the performance once or twice each class on Mon, Tues. Wed. and Thurs.  If I focus on 3 to 5 kids each time we run it, I will have an assessment for all of them before Friday, when we perform it for an audience.  I'm assigning the parts on Monday or Tuesday of next week - and they already have the song and the winter poem pretty much memorized because we've been doing it every day last week.  They are pretty excited about the idea of performing, and in the story, they don't actually have too many lines - so I told them I want them to have it memorized by week 3 (they will have march break to review).  I'll let you know how it goes.

I won't be starting my learning wall until week 3, because I'm doing it with my grade 7 & 8 English Classes (and I won't start teaching them until week 3).  I'm most nervous about that - but I'm planning to get all of the planning for that finished this weekend, so that I can let the kids know what is expected of them before they go to March Break.  That way, the Monday after March break, we can hit the ground running :)

Until next week ...

People I commented on

Here are the blogs I posted on (I didn't keep track so I'm sorry if I forgot any).  I know - what the ....?  Why was I commenting on all of these blogs when I should have been prepping?  It's called procrastination - not to mention, sometimes I was just moved to comment.  I have to say thank you for all of your blogs - they kept me company in the wee hours of the night as I sat prepping for my classes and everyone else in the house was asleep.  It made me feel less alone when I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown from lack of sleep.  Can't wait to see you all and catch up in person tomorrow at OISE.  I sure love midtown :)

Lance Dixon

Laura G.

Vivian (week 1)

Yilin (week 2)

Khushbu (week 1)

Gabrielle (week 3 & week 1)

Effie 

Andrei (week 2)

Justin (week 3)

Lauren (week 2 - I think)

Laura M (Last post)

Irina (week 1)

Lindsay (day 3)

Jen (week 2)

Jason (week 3 & 4)

One More Day!

So here I sit preparing for my last day at school.  All in all it has been pretty freakin awesome :)
We will do our French performance tomorrow for about 35 grade 3's & 2's.  The kids are pretty excited about it.  I was surprised that they all love their tee shirts so much that they would like to keep them.  I wasn't expecting that.  The principal came to watch me do my French class today.  She was very very complimentary afterwards and said I don't have to go back to OISE, I'm ready and I should just go get a job now.  Woo wee :)  You know who I'll be asking for a letter of reference from :)  And my AT said they are all going to miss me so much.  They really are a lovely class.

Tomorrow I'm also going to do another art project.  We are going to deorate white candles with coloured beeswax.  It's really fun and they make very nice presents.  And to update you on the finger knitting craze - it has caught on like wildfire.  Kids (boys and girls) just don't want to stop doing it.  If they could they would do it all day every day.  I started meeting a few kids at lunch recess to do finger knitting in the library - kids I knew from my class.  Well they told 2 friends, and they told 2 friends, and so on and so on (are any of you old enough to remember that commercial about a shampoo - I think it was called "Gee, your hair smells terrific!".  Any way - stay on task maryem! - there are now many many many kids who come and meet me every lunch pretty much to knit in the library.  I don't even know most of their names because they are from all grade (from grade 1 or 2 all the way to grade 6) and word of mouth really really spread.  So much, that another teacher (grade 2/3) asked me to come in to her class today to teach them officially how to finger knit (some of her students had started coming to meet me at lunch).  I brought in 4 of my finger knitting experts from my grade 4 class to help me teach them (2 boys, 2 girls).  It was so fun.  And the kids are getting really creative with what they are doing with it - changing colours, doing 2, 3, and 4 finger knitting patterns, combining strings to make other patterns.  One boy has the longest multi-coloured finger knitting chain going that I have ever seen - and he's not done!  Some kids say they are going to use their knitting as decorations on their Christmas trees, others are going to turn it into a hat for one of their parents, others use them as bracelets, necklaces or decorations for their backpacks, bookmarks - it's endless (and so lovely).

I'm having a blast!  But I am exhausted and look forward to being back at OISE.  Not to mention I miss all of you Midtowners!  See you all next week.

3 down, 1 to go

     Only one more week and then we're all back at OISE.  I felt pretty tired this week.  I stayed up one night until 4 a.m. putting different solids in freezer bags (enough for 12 small groups) for a science experiment on sound conductors and insulators.  I put various items such as sand, cotton balls, pennies, wooden popsicle sticks, etc. etc. (I kind of went overboard) - I also brought in some liquids (coke, oil, milk and we used water from the water fountain).  The kids put the freezer bag against their ear, then they put a ticking clock on the other side of the freezer bag - they had to observe how it affected the sound of the ticking clock - did it muffle it? did it make it sound louder.  I learned from one of our previous science classes that I had to carefully monitor and accompany any liquid they were using - or else it would end up on their desks, or their work or the floor (or on them).  So I asked the AT to help me, and we each accompanied a freezer bag full of one of the liquids to each student to try out (and in the meantime, I had put many other things on their desk to try out - including a bag of air).  So that worked out really well.  No major accidents, other than the fact that the freezer bags I got were really cheap, from a dollar store, so all of them did break - but I always managed to get to the staff room sink before they ended up on the floor (except for some of the coke which did make a little mess on the class room floor).  The kids were so intrigued by all the freezer bags full of stuff, that they couldn't wait to get to science to do the experiment.  (We did it after recess, but I made them come and do a community circle first because we've been doing them once a week - and I wanted to take the opportunity while I had their full attention to remind them of appropriate behaviour when doing science experiments).  It was certainly very experiential and the kids couldn't wait to get to it.  The results were kind of all over the place - but they mainly found out what I was hoping they would find out - that the best conductors of sound are solids, then comes the liquids, and gases last (the bag of air is what we used to test that out).  We did a survey of what everyone found, and that was how we determined (based statistically on how many people found solids to be the best conductors, versus liquids and gases).  We also talked about how our sample was pretty small and that a scientist would want to test it out on many more people than we did, to get a more accurate result.
     I feel bittersweet about next week being the last week.  The children are very sweet and I will miss them - but I will also feel relieved - I'm so tired.  I am feeling stressed about the fact that I have all these OISE assignments hanging over my head that I haven't submitted yet!
     For the last week of school, in French, we are going to do a performance of an autumn poem, a song (a round) and a story that we have been working on since I got there.  It is kind of ambitious - we are going to perform it for a primary class.  So far we've been working in a circle, and it is easier to maintain control of my 36 French students because I can pretty much see all of them in the circle.  But on Friday, I started to stage the story, and it was much harder to maintain the "attentive listening" of the children.  It was also hard for me to differentiate between the different characters.  So today, I went to chinatown and bough 10 yellow tee shirts (for my "sun" characters); 10 blue tee shirts (for my "wind" characters); 10 purple tee shirts (for my narraters); and 10 green tee shirts (for my "people" characters).  The story is Aesop's fable "The Wind and the Sun" (but in French).  I also bought 10 big scarves for the "people" characters to wear when they are "cold" and to take off when they are "hot".  (The story is basically a competition between the wind and the sun about who can get the people to take off their coats.)
     I'm hoping that will help me visually see my different groups (and it will help the audience too).  We'll see how it goes.  I asked my students to try to learn their lines (I have no idea if they will.  They aren't very used to having to do homework in grade 4 - and I wouldn't be surprised if many of the kids left their scripts at school).
     I'll keep you posted on if it works or not.  It'll be fun trying, anyway :)  I'm looking forward to going to the math workshop on Monday afternoon and seeing some of you OISE folks.  (It was also very nice to hang out with some of you at Daiva's lovely concert on Friday).
     Hope you all have a lovely last week!