Today was my last “First Day of School” as a student!! 18 years ago I started my first day of Kindergarten and today I started my first day of my last year of university. From now on, my “first day of school” experiences will be as the teacher as opposed to the student, what an interesting thought! My VERY first day of school: Kindergarten 1995 (I’m on the left, my younger sister is on the right). Don’t you love the work boots and the plaid pants? Although students aren’t back in school until Thursday our student teaching… Read More
Substituting in "T-Division" 3
On Friday I was able to have another substitute teaching day in “T-Division”! I have already had some experience with the division as I was able to substitute teach in an English classroom and in a Grade 2/3 classroom in their French Immersion school a few weeks ago. This time, however, I was in a K-12 school only about 15 minutes from our house. I was so excited because this is a school that I might be applying for a job in next spring! (I have actually even applied to do one of my student teaching placements in this school… Read More
Whole Brain Teaching Wednesday: 10th Edition!
It is my tenth Whole Brain Teaching Wednesday post! I would have liked to have been able to write this post about how whole brain teaching is going with my Grade 5s during this student teaching placement but because of the way our schedule is laid out I haven’t had a science class where I was able to use WBT with them since my last post (I am just observing other subjects). So instead of that, I wanted to share with you why I chose to incorporate WBT strategies into my teaching methods. (This list is in no particular… Read More
Electricity Unit Plan Freebie!
One of our major projects for our Science Methods class is to create a unit plan. After talking with my cooperating teacher I found out that I would be able to teach the Electricity Unit while I was in his classroom so I naturally decided to complete my unit plan on the Electricity cluster. I have networked with so many amazing people since I entered the Faculty of Education and have been able to access many great resources developed by other people. So in the nature of sharing, I have decided to upload my unit onto… Read More
WBT & Manitoba's "Towards Inclusion" Document Part 2
Yesterday I started blogging on how WBT strategies might fit in with the criteria set out by the Manitoba government. I found the Towards Inclusion: Supporting Positive Behaviours in Manitoba Classrooms document and decided to focus on Section 6: Positive Reinforcement (pg. 53) and Section 7: Fair & Predictable Consequences (pg. 58). I quickly realized, however, that this was not a one-post topic and decided to split it into two parts by covering Section 6 yesterday and covering Section 7 today. SECTION 7: FAIR & PREDICTABLE CONSEQUENCES The document summarizes that a teacher must establish consequences for inappropriate behaviour BEFORE… Read More
WBT & Manitoba's "Towards Inclusion" Document Part 1
I spent the better part of this weekend working on filming a video with a group for our Classroom Management class. Our film is supposed to demonstrate a specific classroom management model and will be used to teach the rest of our classmates about said model. With my last post about “The Scoreboard” and this project on my mind, I started thinking about how WBT strategies would fit into different classroom management models. While I enjoyed the model we were working on (Rudolf Driekur’s Social Discipline Model) I decided to do some research on how WBT would fit in… Read More