Reflective Journal

Entry 3

I have discovered that teachers don't seem to have much personal time! Most days I leave my school close to 5 o'clock. I'm either getting things ready for the next day or helping coach volleyball. Then during the school day your time is taken up by supervision and clubs and meetings! There are all sorts of unplanned surprises that can throw a curve ball at your lesson plans for the day, such as a kids Grandfather showing up out of the blue to read some stories to the class, or a school-wide play put on in the gym, and assemblies and field trips and so on. And on top of that you have short meetings with parents, marking, reports cards, and parent-teacher conferences! So the professional life of a teacher can really interfere with the personal life in terms of free time.

Entry 4

My school isn’t very technologically advanced. There is an overhead in my classroom that I have used occasionally, mostly in math. There is also a small TV up in the back corner of the room with a VCR/DVD player, but I have never seen it used. Its positioning is awkward as it is behind the desks and up high on the wall, so students would have to crane their necks to see it. The school has an aging computer lab that they are hoping to redo with money raised by the parent’s association. It can be hard to get into as the schedule is fairly full, and my class gets half-hour blocks so that doesn’t give us much time. The principal at my school is currently looking into and pricing out Smart boards, but to get the money and the boards installed will probably take another year or so. I wish there was a projector attached to my teacher’s computer so I could show a power point or a video clip, but I guess that will come with the Smart boards.

Entry 5

My school is located in Millwoods, which has quite a large recent immigrant population. Nearly half of my students are of East Indian decent, and two of those have both moved here directly from India. The rest were all born in Canada, but their first language is still what is spoken at home (Punjabi for the most part) and not English. So for most of them, the first time they encounter English is at school whether it be playschool or kindergarten, and then they don’t get any help at home practicing English which can make it difficult to learn properly and efficiently. Parents are often unable to assist with homework because they can’t understand it, so students lose one of their most valuable resources; their parents!

Entry 6

Some strategies, process, games and tools that worked for me:

• Giving very clear instructions
• Group work if well structured
• Strategies such as think/pair/share, literature circles, discussion groups
• Getting to know the students personally has helped with connecting and communicating with them
• Math manipulative tools
• o Fraction circles
• o Thousands cubes, hundreds flats, ten rods and single cubes
• Giving clear expectations for an assignment: this usually involved showing a discussing a copy of the rubric I would be using to mark with. This leaves no room for the students to think of excuses as to why they didn’t do what they were asked to do.
• Jeopardy works great! Kids love it!
• Passing a ball around as a study tool: if you catch it you need to say the answer to the question and then pass it on.
• Playing music throughout the day at various times, like in the mornings when the students enter, after lunch while they read and any other time when they need a pick-up.
• Moving around throughout the day, getting the students up and out of their seats
  

What doesn’t work:

• Yelling at students
• Expecting quiet and sitting still all the time
• Giving unclear instructions
• Getting frustrated or showing anger/defeat
• I have to watch how I word questions because the students would get confused easily sometimes
• Starting a unit where the text book thinks students should be. I’ve learned to start really easy to see where everyone is at and then you can go from there and adjust your lessons.