Friday, June 29, 2012

What a Fantastic Year!


I had an amazing time practicing my teaching skills and abilities over the course of the year and it proved to be rewarding. I thank all of you who helped me in kind, encouragement, inspiration, spirit, and in deed. I had ups and downs and it wasn’t easy but I made it through my first year of teaching, albeit supply teaching and I am thankful for the help along the way!

I thank the organizations that provided the many ideas for activities that I used in my Before/After School Classroom (Kaboose, Activity Village, DLTK, Crafts for Kids and the myriad of fellow bloggers and twitterers).

I thank the students with whom I worked, my co-teachers – some of you supported me in ways you do not know through your great teaching skills which I observed and tried to emulate, the Administrator and the Principal for all that they have done for me, and the teachers for whom I supplied who left great lesson plans to follow. I realize even more that I love teaching and I plan to keep pursuing it. I will build upon my experience and someday be in the ranks of some of the great teachers/educators I know!

Friday, June 8, 2012

Collaborative Instruction Approach!

The first step of Collaborative Instruction Approach to teaching involves task acheivement where the group focuses on objectives followed by group maintenance by using interpersonal and group skills, then finally group effectiveness which involves reacting to group needs. I used the Collaborative Instruction approach when I taught my group of Primary students to make Father's Day cards. For example, the first step was led by myself by modelling the skills to achieve the desired objective which was the outcome of a certain Father's Day card - either a shirt or a dog's head. The second step included interpersonal skills and group skills that each of the students lent to the learning process whereby some of the students helped other students with the gluing step etc. Finally the third step was reacting to the group needs such as more paper, and other extensions of the original idea to elaborate on card making and effectiveness - for example, extending the card to an entire body or entirely different original idea using collage to create the words or dot-to-dot idea. The entire group was full of excitement and enthusiasm to obtain a finished product which they could be proud to give to their Fathers on Father's Day next weekend. Look at some of the results!
(Foundational Methods, Third Edition, Edited by Hilary Brown and Darlene Ciuffetelli Parker, Ph.D)


Father's Day card open and closed by Bhavya gr. 1

Example of an extension by creating the whole body by Sasha, SK

Father's Day card opened by Sasha, SK
'Dog' Father's Day card exemplar

Extension of 'Dog' Father's Day card by Natalie, gr. 2 with heart and tail

Original Father's Day card using collage for the word 'Dad' by Andrei, SK

Original Father's Day card by Andrei, SK dot-to-dot wagon

Father's Day Daffodils by Andrei and Jefferson, SK