Student Teaching Reflection

I had the privilege to spend 5 weeks in Mrs. Biech’s Kindergarten classroom at J.R. Reid.

It was most definitely an eye-opening experience but in the best ways! I quickly learnt that even though I had spent plenty of time in a classroom, it is a totally different experience when you are the one in charge of teaching and planning. I was lucky enough to have a cooperating teacher who let me take over fairly early on so I was able to be hands on and learn by doing.

I was able to incorporate a decent amount of ICT in the classroom, it was fun to be able to think of new engaging ways with ICT to accomplish tasks in the classroom. ICT was a apart of every morning routine in the classroom, using the Smart Board for the students to check in for attendance, they would move their name from the at home column to the at school column on the Smart Board using Smart Notebook. PowerPoint was also incorporated daily to show slideshows for morning math talks with the students.

I also was able to test out Lumio during one of my evaluated lessons. It was a program that was new to the classroom and the

https://www.smarttech.com/en/lumio

students loved it! I made a matching game for the students to use during the acquire portion of my lesson. Finally, I used Epic as something different for the students.Every morning would start with a read aloud that I read to the students but then later in the day, I would let the students pick a book for us to read on Epic and they thought that was kind of special and they enjoyed it!I had hoped to be able to test out Plickers but didn't use that during this placement, there might have been opportunities to use it during certain activities but the age of the students in this Kindergarten class were too young and it would have been a little out of their abilities. I am hoping to incorporate it in my next placement!

https://sites.psu.edu/cjs5775ldt505/2016/06/20/app-review-plickers/

This placement was a huge learning curve for me that I am very thankful for. I felt like I was able to get my feet under me fairly quickly and there were things I excelled at but also things that definitely learned need some work! With being able to take over the classroom fairly early on, I was able to build my abilities within classroom management. I was able to find what works for me when it comes to keeping the classroom under control. I was also in a classroom with some high needs in many areas so it allowed me to gain plenty of experience and knowledge in making adaptations for multiple students.

While there were things I was able to excel at during my placement, there are definitely things that I found out need some work! I realized as a teacher, you always need a plan B. Things don't always go as you planned and you need to be able to change the plan quickly. I need to be better at thinking quick and making changed quickly. During this placement I was able to experience different ways of dealing with students presenting behavioural issues in the classroom. It was eye opening to see how many different ways there are to address these issues and how important it is to know which interventions work for which students. I realized that I need to continue learning and growing in my knowledge when it comes to interventions and how certain behaviours are dealt with.

Overall, it was a very rewarding and eye opening experience in the best ways! I didn't think that Kindergarten would be a grade that I would love as much as I did but it is for sure a grade I would be excited to be back teaching!