Apologies for my lack of blogging lately! Between traveling all over NZ on the weekends and being very busy at school, I have not had a ton of time to update. I also ran into a bit of a technology issue when my hard drive decided to misbehave 2 weeks ago. I just got my laptop back last week (thanks to help from Erin and Scott) and was frantically trying to complete a grad assignment! I hope that this and the following posts make up for my absence. :)
One of the reasons that I have been so busy at school is because I have been in full control of the classroom! It was a very gradual process up to this point. I started off slowly, picking up more and more lessons as well as team teaching with my cooperating teacher. However, for the past 2 weeks I have been the main classroom teacher. It is definitely challenging and exhausting to be in full control of the classroom, but also very valuable practice. One of the most time-consuming aspects is planning, although I am lucky because we plan closely with other team teachers and I have a lot of guidance and ideas from excellent teachers. I am also excited that I have a bunch of new unit and lesson plans to add to my repertoire as well as practice with planning classroom logistics.
I work especially closely with the other team teachers when planning for maths since that is structured in a modern learning environment (MLE) where our class combines with 2 other classes. I have been working with 13 students from years 5 and 6 who are at similar ability levels. We are on geometry and I am teaching them about 2D and 3D shapes and their attributes.
I also used this group for a graduate project called the "Teacher Work Sample." This project involved issuing a pre-assessment, lesson planning based on pre-assessment results, and then post-assessing to measure student gains. This project was useful practice with data analysis and setting goals, but took a lot of hard work (especially since I was without my laptop while completing much of it!) and sometimes I felt slightly confused when trying to translate the MLE structure and NZ curriculum to the assignment. However, I think that I learned a lot from the assignment and it was a relief to hand it in this morning! I also had a ton of fun teaching my group and planning creative lessons. One of my favorites included a 3D shapes guessing game where students had to describe 3D shapes based on their attributes and have classmates figure out the answer. The students really enjoyed the game (they got slightly competitive in good fun!) and it was encouraging to see them truly grasping 3D shapes and mathematical language.
A glimpse of our 3D shapes work!
A page from my group's math modeling book. The group took turns
identifying faces, edges, and corners of 3D shapes.
I have also enjoyed planning creative lessons for other subjects, particularly writing. More on that to come!
Lots of Love,
Katie
Fun Fact: In New Zealand upper primary homework is encouraged but optional. The idea is that students should not burn themselves out after a long day at school and should instead spend quality time with their families. However, many students will choose to do a weekly homework assignment (like a mini project) assigned at the beginning of the week. Teachers will try to motivate students by applauding those who complete the HW. A positive of this philosophy is that encourages students to be self-motivated instead of forced to do homework. It also nice for parents who don't have to chase their children down to do homework :)!
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