My third day of practicum was filled with a mix of emotions.  I was nervous, yet excited to teach my very first lesson as a teacher!  Luckily, I had spent two classes previously in our classroom to prepare.  My big “aha moment” from this day was twofold: thirty minutes flies by before you know it, and teaching is a lot of fun and the feeling of students learning under your watch is incredibly fulfilling.  I felt very prepared for my first lesson as I had gone over it a hundred times before teaching it.  I knew how I wanted my instruction to go and how I wanted my activity to go.  While my instruction was on time, I realized after teaching this lesson that students really need a lot of time to think before putting thoughts to paper.  I tasked students to help me brainstorm Halloween-themed words, and then to write three descriptive sentences using those words.  While most students were able to complete the three-sentence task, some did not finish, and most did not finish the illustration component of my assignment.  I reflected on this matter afterwards and determined that perhaps my instruction was slightly too long.  However, although some students weren’t able to complete the assignment in my thirty-minute segment, they had a blast brainstorming words and writing their descriptive sentences.  I was very surprised at how large some of the students’ vocabularies were and that they knew how to put it to good use.  Once the students were focused on the task, they weren’t disrupting their neighbours or talking at all.  This made my first lesson memorable, and about as smooth as it could have gone!

My fourth day of practicum was my favourite day so far.  I developed a lesson based on indigenous ways of knowing and culture.  I gathered the students into Circle where we passed around my talking stick.  This talking stick was handed down to me by my grandmother, who taught grades one and two for forty years, and it was amazing to use it in action.  We shared three facts about ourselves to the rest of class, and to my delighted surprise, the students all participated and remained silent until they had their turn with the talking stick.  It was so much fun participating in the activity with the class!  I have been so impressed by the respectful nature of our grade threes during my lesson time.  My “aha moment” continues to revolve around time management skills, and students finishing their work during my lesson time.  So far, I’ve left roughly twenty minutes for writing and activity time, yet students are still struggling to complete their assignments.  We wrote acrostic poems using the letters of their first names, and completed them using descriptive letters beginning with the letters of their name.  Perhaps it is not unusual for primary students to not finish their assignments completely after a thirty-minute lesson.  This is something that has puzzled me for the past two classes, and is something I will learn with experience and continue to think about and address.  While the majority of my feedback has been overly positive, I want to challenge myself in making a lesson where I give appropriate instruction, but the students are also able to complete the task in the timeframe.  I’m looking forward to returning to my class next week!