First Day of Placement

When I found out that I was going to be teaching a grade 4/5 split class, I was excited, yet very apprehensive, as I believe teaching split classes are very challenging. I remember being in many split classes growing up, and teachers would simply give me busy work and teach the other grade. I did not want this to be the case in my placement class. I was very pleased to realize that my classroom did not work in this fashion.

I have two associate teachers, one who teaches in the morning and one who teaches in the afternoon. I thought that this may not be good for the students as they need consistency and order. After observing the class routines I was relieved to learn that each teacher runs their lessons and disciplines the students in the same way. Hooray for teamwork!

On my first day I witnessed a lot of positive things happening in this grade 4/5 split class. In the morning students read for fifteen minutes. This program is called “Just Right Books”. Every Friday students hand in a reading response telling the teacher what occurred in the chapter they read that week. Every student reads a novel that is at par with their reading level. Students are also learning the roles of literature circles, and will begin forming them very soon. The teacher also conferenced with the students during this class, discussing their response to a story that was read to them. After lunch classical music plays over the announcements for three minutes, and students are to write about how the music makes them feel, either through words or pictures. In math, students worked with manipulatives (base 10 blocks) and worked in groups to display the number 3821 in as many ways as they could (words, symbols, expanded form, standard form, etc). In science students created their own habitats out of pop bottles and materials that had been collected over the week.

These are just five very productive teaching techniques that I witnessed on my first day. I believe that I will learn a lot from my associate teachers, as well as from my students. Here’s hoping for a very productive Block 1 experience!