This had been a really good experience for me. I had really enjoyed working in a grade 11 classroom and I knew that I most likely would as my end goal is to be a grade 11/12 Social Studies teacher.
I had been in an English First Peoples class, which had caused some anxiety. Some changes in plans the week before I had gone into practicum had caused some other anxiety. Anxiety is nothing new to me, but it had been quite high around this time, and had been especially high on my first day.
After my first day, I ended up having a really good time in the classroom and had made some really good connections with students in the classroom.
In the classroom, I had aimed to create engaging lessons that varied from day to day. We had done activities such as blackout poetry, reading comprehension cubes (where students had to roll to see what question they had to answer), mind maps (we did this twice since they had been really engaged and had worked really well), and wanted posters. Lots if the students in my classroom had enjoyed these activities, especially when they had been different from what they had done the day before.
This is not to say that we did not have a routine in the classroom. Most days we would open with a small activity (I would get them to connect either a word or picture and I would get them to connect it to the book we had been reading (Medicine Walk). We would then listen to the book for about 15 to 20 minutes (unless we did a reading quiz where they would be in charge of reading it themselves while they did the quiz) and we would then do some sort of activity.
We had also watched The Grizzlies in the class and the students wrote a short essay based on the movie. I had never watched the movie prior to being told that I would be teaching this movie, but I did really enjoy this movie and it appeared that my students did as well. Many of them had not been on their phones throughout the movie (which I remember doing throughout my own high school education). I was actually very happy about this because I know what I like and what my CT may like doesn’t always align with what students like, but this time it did.
One thing that my CT had done that I had continued with (and really enjoyed) was I gave an optional question at the end where students could draw a picture of a cat doing something. Lots of students had done it and some of them didn’t. It was not for marks and had just been something fun to do.
