English Language Arts – Mrs. Chyz's Classroom

Today I took a crack at teaching Arts Ed to my grade 5 students. I was given the instruction to make some kind of Christmas craft that the students could take home afterwards. My first thought was “great, this is basically an outcome!” I had looked at the Arts Ed curriculum previously and knew that it was focused around popular culture, which luckily for me can be widely interpreted. After looking around for something that could be easily done within my classroom (using mostly paper, markers, and glue) I landed on Ugly Holiday Sweaters. I know they are popular right now, and I thought it would work well to create a mini sweater that could be turned in to a Christmas ornament. I made my own to see how long it would take and then decided I needed to make the lesson a little longer and looked to the English Language Arts to add a written component. I had the students answer (in full sentences) what their favorite part of the holidays were and what their family holiday traditions were.

My target this week was time management. In past lessons I found myself not even looking at the time and then scrambling to wrap things up at before the next lesson started. I set myself a 10 minute timer and an alarm to go off 10 minutes before the end of the class (which was also the end of the day). I didn’t have the lesson timed out like that, I just wanted to be aware of the time and be forced to check it throughout the lesson. I also, for the first time, took note of when all the bells rang. In terms of time management, my lesson went very well. In terms of the activity, it was a hit with both my co-op and my students. They got started right away and needed very little instruction aside from the initial instructions. In terms of students listening and staying on task for the length of the lesson, there is room for improvement. I specified that it was an independent in their own desk activity because I know these students can be pretty high energy (i.e. Loud) in the afternoon . I told them they could talk to their neighbours if they kept conversation quiet and stayed in their seats. I even said to stay in their seats and raise their hand when they were ready to attach the string to their ornament or if they wanted Miss Wishira’s help at the glitter station . One student listened to me. Out of 22. Maybe next week’s target? Not the worst idea.

More student creations!

Today was only my second time in the classroom and so it was my first time taking a crack at “teaching”. I over planned a 15 minute pre-Daily 5 lesson about a couple of Word Attack Strategies to use while reading to self. I would say that overall it went pretty well. The students were really responsive to my prompting questions. Part of my over planning was in anticipation of me being at the front of the classroom asking questions to absolute silence. That was not the case at all! I started by telling the students that I would only be taking answers by people with their hands up and went on to asking the questions. Lo and behold, I would ask a question and a bunch of little hands shot up in the air!

While the lesson and participation went well, I don’t feel like the students truly understood or retained any of my little strategies. Some strategies they were already a little familiar with and others could have probably filled an entire lesson. I don’t consider this any sort of failure on my point, rather it just makes me so much more excited to have a classroom of my own. It is hard being in a classroom only once a week because you don’t really know what the students know and understand already. Or even more important, you don’t know how they learn.

We have a great Co-op who is so flexible on what we want to teach, but I can see how with such little time in the classroom the draw of more structure might seem easier. I am not letting this discourage me. At this point we are all way underprepared to have our own classrooms full-time and so we are just currently dipping our toes in the proverbial waters. This is why next week I have decided to jump on a Math lesson; something I am the opposite of familiar with. Try them all while I can!

Wish me luck!

Jen