Kaitlyn Dunn

The students were learning about money, so I created 4 math stations to further the students learning. The first math station was called KABOOM! There were about 40 popsicle sticks in a cup and some were labelled with coins to add up and others had the word KABOOM! on it. The students were required to pick a popsicle stick without looking, and add up the money amount. If they picked up a KABOOM! popsicle stick, then they have to put all the popsicle sticks they collected so far back into the cup. The second math station was a match game. The students had to match the  coin amount with the written money amount. For example, (25)(25)(25)(25)(25) on one card and $1.25 on another. The third math station was called anchor chart questions. The students were given half of an anchor chart and two word problems that required them to add up money amounts and figure out the total of a purchase. The last math station was called spin and total. Students were given spinners and a piece of paper, every time they spun the spinner, they would write down the coin it landed on. They were required to do this five times in each row and total up all the coins in the right column.

The use of technology in a classroom is endless. I was able to experience this during my placement through various apps that the students could use to extend their learning. I was introduced to the app called popplet, which is a free app that helps students with mind-mapping. It is a wonderful visual for students to use to help create graphic organizers for brainstorming, or to categorize different topics.  The students have been learning about soil, specifically composting. I had them go on the popplet app and create two categories: what you can compost and what you cannot compost. The students went around the room and took photos, went on KidRex to search images and sorted them!

It is quiet evident that the grade 3/4’s at David Maxwell are a very curious group. It was a perfect opportunity to stem their curiosities by bringing in plants for them to dissect. We have been talking about plants and their functions to survive, so I figured the best way to understand a plants function, is to look inside. Each group of students had plastic knives, aluminium pans, and magnifying glasses to explore with. There were 4 stations, with 4 different types of plants. Each plant had it’s own characteristics and were different from each other so they could write down a variety of observations. Many of the students noticed that when you cut the leaf, it had water droplets inside! They also said that the stem contained water in it as well. They were curious to see the different types of roots plants have, some were thick and some were thin! This was an overall excellent learning experience with the students, they were truly able to explore on their own combing information they learned in class with new findings through exploration.  

Today we learned about pollination. There were a lot of large terms the students had to digest, so I figured I would allow the students participate in a fun activity to let them embody the experience! They went to their desk and found a flower on top of a juice box and Cheetos. The juice box was a symbol for nectar and the Cheetos symbolized the pollen. When the students drank their “nectar” they also rubbed their fingers on the “pollen”. Once I rang a bell, students flew around the room to another flower and rubbed their hands on another flower. This signified the transfer of pollen from one plant to another! The students loved this activity and were able to articulate back to me what they had learned!

My teaching partner and I decided we wanted to get to know the students and allow the students to get to know us. We brought in a few items that meant something special to us in our lives. Some of these items were photos of our pets, family, medals, work tags, and University acceptances. The students were amazed with the items we brought in, which lead to endless questions and curiosities. It was a great opportunity to connect with the students. Following our discussion, the students got to fill out a paper with information about themselves! After this, they took a few of their most favorite facts about themselves and wrote it on a community graffiti wall we created. We hung it above their lockers!

Today at David Maxwell we celebrated down syndrome awareness day by wearing awesome socks! I loved seeing the support for down syndrome from the entire school, what a wonderful community to be involved with.

Paw Patrol! One of the most popular shows on television right now for our younger generation. Miss Shanna Small and I had the opportunity to work at Tecumseh Mall on family day to put temporary tattoos on children and talk to them about Paw Patrol! It was a great experience to truly see how excited children got when they met their role models like Chase, Skye, and Marshall. It was a very fun event, and I was thrilled to meet students with smiling faces, that I will see in my near future!

After spending some time with the grade 1’s exploring measurement, we decided to measure a student to see how many pencil’s long she is! After this, students knowledge was extended by measuring another student and comparing measurements. We wanted to find out if the student was longer than, or shorter than the other student!

The students were learning about the basic structure of a tree. They began learning about how trees drink water! The grade 1’s loved seeing a visual of how trees and plants drink water through pieces celery absorbing water through the holes on the bottom of the branch. Students predicted what would happen if we left the celery in the water for a few days. They drew photos of what the celery looked like when we first put each branch in the water and compared it to a few days later! Such a great experience.