For the first lesson I chose to teach a lesson on calmness, from the Health Curriculum. Because of a lesson I had taught to my students prior to this, my students had an idea what calmness was,and in the prior lesson we talked about how calmness feels. A lot of lessons I had taught involved using a book as a resource, which works fine, but I wanted to expand a little and see how my students respond to a different type of media. For this reason I chose a Youtube video to help me teach this lesson. As I read over the outcome and indicator, i decided a physical activity like yoga would help the students understand what calm is to them, and how they can self regulate and become calm using a resource like yoga. Even though I only lead the students in a small portion of the instruction, the students were respectful and well behaved during the entire lesson. In my reflection blog I talk about how happy I was with the way this lesson went, and how I did use an online resource, if given the opportunity I would like to try and have a community yoga instructor come in and give my students a lesson on yoga.
My PDP goal for Week seven had to be created for myself, I chose to use the goal from the week before I hadn’t done a lesson that week, and it was an area I wanted to work on. My goal was “Classroom management”, and the steps to create my goal were “I will try to be more aware of individual students actions. If someone is off task I plan to use eye contact, gestures, or move towards a student to refocus them”. The comments I received were quite positive, and they were good strategies to continue using when I return for my three week block. All of the comment from this PDP is listed in my lesson plan linked above.
My second lesson is from the Social Studies curriculum, and it focused on the four seasons. I wanted to make sure my students had something to help them visualize the different seasons, and I used the book, Simon Says: Seasons by, Gilles Tibo. I used a worksheet as an example for the students, I would ask my students what spring looks like and feels like, and then I would explain what I was drawing and why, then I would have the students draw in that box. This type of guided instruction worked well and kept most of my students on task, and they were able to focus on one task at a time. This lesson went well, and I once I am in a classroom for a longer period of time would like to see what types of additions can be made to make sure my students take some knowledge with them about seasons. In my reflection blog I mentioned how I could use students oral responses to gauge understanding, and I believe this was an important realization to have!
The PDP goal for this week was “Classroom Management/ Engagement: Awareness and Responsiveness (Withitness).” The steps taken to achieve my goal were: “I will continuously scan the room so that I am aware of what the students are engaged in. I will make eye contact with several students. I will make sure I am looking at the students when I speak. I will make sure I do not have my back to the students. I will give clear directions of what to do.” One of the comments my Co-op made was “How would I make sure that a couple of students understood the lesson?”, if I had the opportunity I would sit with them individually and see if they could discuss with me characteristics of the different seasons.
Leeza Currin 