Creation of STEM night
December 5th, 2019
As a Pre-Service teacher, in my first practicum, I had the pleasure of organizing and creating a STEM/ Maker night for the students at Zone Township Central School. This STEM night gave students an opportunity to build strong relationships with their families, and for parents to learn new and engaging activities to teach their children at home, as an alternative to less stimulating activities that may not foster mathematic or science skills. Not only did this build fun and positive relationships between students and their parents and siblings, but also a chance for parents to interact and build relationships with teachers. Giving parents the tools to engage and educate their children is an important strategy to build their child’s love of learning, which as a result positively influences the student’s learning and relationship with school.
This STEM night had multiple stations using a wide range of technology, such as Dash and Dot robots to practicing coding, Makey Makey gadgets using different conductors, and OSMO applications to practice skills such as identifying words, addition skill, and coding.
This experience supports my continued professional growth as it gave me an opportunity to build my leadership skills, as well as build professional relationship with colleagues, students and parents. I also developed an understanding of how to use the various technology that was utilized in this event. In the future, I strive to continue joining committees and creating events that help foster home-school relationships, as I realized the benefit it had on building relationships with students when parents were involved in their child’s learning.
14 Days of Fitmas
December 2nd, 2019
In my first week of my practicum block one, through observation, I realized that Daily Physical Activity was more of an after thought for many classrooms, and many students were disengaged and did not want to participate in Daily Physical Activity. I decided to take initiative and create a school-wide DPA challenge that would excite the students through implementation of incentives for both the students and the teachers. Each day the students and teachers were asked to complete a certain amount of exercises. Based on the point system, whichever classroom had the most points, were given a Christmas activity period with Christmas-themed prizes and the whole school received smoothies if the school reached a certain amount of points. Not only was this exciting for the students, but the teachers were also motivated to participate in the challenge because they were given a free prep period for that day. In the future, in order to improve this DPA activity, clear expectations I realized would have been of benefit to the teachers, administrator and students. It would have limited the amount of confusion when communicating amongst each party. This tested my leadership skills and reflected my passion for health and physical activity which is essential for prevention of injuries and healthy development. The creation of this challenge supports my continued professional growth, because as an RMT, my goal as a future educator, is to not lose sight of educating students on the importance of physical activity on the body.
