This week was all about continuing on with many performance projects! We also took a trip to a FANTASTIC Aladdin play put on by the grade 7 class at St.Josephs, and visited the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. This week I got to experience many scary "firsts" as I officially submitted my first ever report card grades, attended my first IPP meeting, and booked my first field trip! I am at a point in my practicum where I feel extremely comfortable with my TM, my kids, my coworkers, and my work environment. I hope that in my final month of practicum I can start to expand my relationships with other students as well as with parents. I plan on starting a "drawing club" within the next week so that I can get a few of my artsy students involved in some drawing opportunities as the art curriculum doesn't allow much room for them to refine their strengths. I will also be developing relationships with parents as I meet with them in upcoming parent-teacher interviews, and if any of them decided to join us on our field trip to the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. In the upcoming week, I look forward to starting new units in basically all of my classes. I have many exciting activities planned for my upcoming social unit "New Roots for Alberta". For example, I have created a fur trader game where kids will get the chance to experience how the fur trade worked by taking the role of either a trading company, a voyageur, or an aboriginal trader. In science I am excited to be moving on to the "Light and Shadows" unit because I know that the kids will really love a lot of the experiments that I have found! In gym we will be moving on to dance which is very exciting for me because I think that dance is a great way to get kids active, and I know that I can integrate a little bit of technology into my curriculum too which is great! In health we will wrap up our physical safety unit and move on to talking about internet safety. In math we will be moving away from the division unit and moving towards patterns and relations.
Science
The kiddos have been busy as bees building away on their KISS motors vehicles. Many of them have quickly realized the importance of simple things such as parallel axles, even wheels, longer or shorter brakes, etc. It has been amazing to see how the kids work together and give each other tips to help make everyone's vehicles more successful. My students have been super engaged during this performance project, and I think that it is safe to say that they are learning LOTS about testing for consistency and accuracy. They come in every morning excited to get building and to try to make their vehicle better. Below are some pictures and videos of their cars/ trials.
Gym
In gym the kids have been very busy planning and practicing their gymnastics routines. I gave each group many chances to practice their routine to their music throughout the week. One of my classroom management strategies during this time was to have each groups' routine planning and 'textbooks' in a color-coordinated envelope that they would get at the beginning of class, and then would put their papers in and return at the end of class. The envelopes were carried into the gym in my red bin and I would simply place them in the middle of the gym and kids knew to come find their own once their mats were set up, their shoes were off, and they had stretched as a group. This system of organized envelopes worked very efficiently! Due to absences, not every group has performed yet, but a few of the routines are shown below!
Social
The few social classes that we had this week were mostly dedicated to working on our social brochures. The students had some time to do online research, and to find maps and pictures. They are having fun learning about Writing-On-Stone and the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, and they were very excited with my announcement that we will be heading to Head-Smashed-In in April! One of my things that I decided to try out this week was a "thinking-deep" question that I would write on the board each day. Then I would hand kids a 'cell phone' sticky note and asked them to 'text' me their response to my prompt. The kids loved being able to 'text' me their answers, and it served as a great formative assessment method for my sake.
Math
In math this week we continued learning about the different ways to represent remainders, and how the context of a question can change the resulting answer or the importance of a remainder. We also had one class where students got to try out a few multiplication fact games. They were very engaged in the games and were so excited to try and shout out their answers!