Author: saramcmanus

Observational Report #4
Mrs. Sara McManus
School of Education, University of Northern British Columbia
EDUC 390: Observational Practicum
Melanie Baerg, M.Ed. – Lecturer
November 23, 2021

Dear Observational Diary,

Today I was at School B, the junior school. My Teacher Candidate partner and I switched pods this morning, which means I was with two new teachers for my last day at this school. I will call them Mr. A. and Ms. E. for anonymity. They welcomed me into their classrooms, and I comfortably joined them on their prep block for the first period of the morning. I enjoyed the much-needed break from a busy classroom. Mr. A., Ms. E., and I each puttered on marking some student work (I had brought some tests with me to grade during my lunch break). While we marked, we casually chatted about many distinct aspects of education.

Mr. A. and Ms. E. shared stories regarding their experiences earning their Bachelor of Education degrees. Mr. A. attended UNBC in Prince George, and although he is certified in the secondary stream, he has also taught at the intermediate level by taking several professional development courses to provide evidence of his expanded training. Ms. E. is in her first year of teaching, and we were able to make the personal connection that her life partner is the teacher who took over the classroom I taught at the alternate school.

The teachers were able to provide me with more information on how the Pod System of the junior school works. They both had a much more positive perspective on the Pod system than the other teachers I had observed and explained how it was researched and developed over a series of years by the previous Administrator. I think that I am finally starting to get a grasp on their complicated schedule. The school has eleven homerooms of grade 8’s and eleven of grade 9’s, but the system is designed for twelve of each, so it has a few modifications that make it look complicated to an outsider.

We also talked extensively about the new school building. It sounded like the move-in date will likely be pushed back from spring break due to the recent shipping delays around the province. The school Administration recently showed the teachers drawings that illustrated each teacher’s classroom in the new building. Mr. A. described that each pair of Pod Teachers would have adjacent classrooms with a removable wall to create one large workspace. The classrooms will be matched with another pair to form a set of four connected classrooms that can be fully opened to form a super-large workspace. In the centre of the four connected classes is a “maker-space.”

With the move to the new building, the entire school is getting all modern technology. The teachers were asked to pack up their personal classroom materials when it is time to move. They are not sure what type of upgrades they will beg receiving. Collectively, the teachers have requested a change from Chromebooks over to laptops with more capabilities for the students. There are not enough Chromebooks in the school for each Pod to have even one classroom set. The English-Social Studies teachers in the schools have become the keepers of the Chromebooks. They have been given priority use over other subjects. Some classrooms have a few desktop PCs installed for students to access, and the new building will have two designated computer lab classrooms.

Each classroom has either a smartboard or a projector and a sympodium. Ms. E. prefers to use her personal iPad in place of the sympodium in her room, as she can work on files at home and then plug it in at school if she wishes to share them with her students on the big screen. One of the other Math-Science teachers in the school has a smart tablet that connects to her projector. She can write on her tablet as she walks around the classroom wirelessly connected as it projects. She uses this in formative assessment by passing the tablet to students and allowing them to answer questions on the board.

For the second block, I accompanied Ms. E. to her Math classroom. She had made some strategic class management changes since I had been a TTOC in her room over a month ago. She has started to use a seating chart. Her class was still objecting to the new plan, but after she put the map up on the screen, they knew she was serious, and they reluctantly moved and settled down after a few minutes. To keep her students from leaving their work in their lockers and continuing the delay of class, Ms. E. has given each student a personal folder for their work in each of her blocks. This is similar to a strategy that I used at the alternate school to prevent the students from taking their work home. At the start of the class, she handed each file out to the students individually. They were permitted to doodle on and decorate their file folder. She collected the folders in the same manner at the end of the block. She found that this also reduced the mess from students leaving her classroom as they rushed out at the sound of the bell.

Ms. E. has also recently tightened up on her cell phone policy. She has implemented a “phones out of sight” rule, where the student loses their phone for the entire day if she spots it. Luckily for the students, she was all bark and no bite today. The students were clearly testing to see if she would actually take their phones.  There were lots of excuses like changing songs or checking the time. I lightly recommended that she pop across the hall to check out Ms. S’s cell phone jail idea. Whenever possible, I would jump in and let her Grade 9 students know that their cell phone immaturity would not be tolerated at the high school, which provided her with a bit of backup. Although she was the Classroom Teacher and I was the Teacher Candidate, I think that she appreciated my authoritative and experienced voice, especially when a student’s phone rang, and he dared to answer it.

I loved how she began her math class with an entrance ticket. It was the first time I had observed this in practice. It was a half piece of paper with three simple polynomial questions on it. Beside each question was a mini-self assessment asking the student to rate how confident they were in solving the equation. For the remainder of the block, Ms. E. and the Pod Education Assistant floated among the students assisting them on worksheets that were leftover from the previous day, and then as they moved onto a new one. I was sad to see for such a new teacher that there was no universal design or differentiated options for her students. However, I noticed that she adapted the worksheet for one student by reducing the number of questions he was expected to do.

For the next block, I moved into Mr. A.’s English class. These students were working on finishing their essays. Mr. A. gave the class a firm – get it done today speech! The students who were done were asked to do some silent reading and let the others work. There was clear, explicit direction for no phones and no talking. It was a work block. I was prepared to sit quietly; I thought he really meant business. Within fifteen minutes, it was clear that very few of his students took him seriously; even the ones who started out reading had their phones out and were chattering away by halfway through the block. Mr. A occasionally reminded them that it was their last day in class to work on their essay but did not bother to follow through on his expectations for no phones or to talk.

In fact, we had an enjoyable conversation in regard to his views on assessment and reporting.  He explained that School B is in its first year of moving all its students onto a trimester system. All the students have both a Math-Science and an English-Socials block for the entire year but rotate electives at Christmas and Spring Break for three semesters and reporting periods.

During the English Block, I was surprised to see that only a few students elected to work on their essays with the Chromebooks. Most students were handwriting their essays, but none had dictionaries or other methods to spell-check or edit their work. I was even more surprised (but maybe, I shouldn’t have been) that so many Grade 9 students were writing their essay using a writing prompt worksheet because they could not write the elements of an essay without it, despite the format being outlined on the whiteboard. In hindsight, I should have asked Mr. A. if he had done this on purpose to differentiate his lesson, or if he started as a UDL and then gave students the option to go above the worksheet.

After lunch, Mr. A. had planned to teach a Careers block, and Ms. E. had her support block for Math. (This is a block where she does curricular Math development work for the department as a whole.) Mr. A., unfortunately, had forgotten that he needed the Chromebooks for his Career class and lent them out to another class during the lunch hour. He ended up spontaneously changing the students’ block to Social Studies instead. He said that this was one of the biggest advantages of the Pod System. As a bridge between the elementary years and high school, Pods can teach the four core academic courses in any format that they wish at any pace throughout the year, just like an elementary classroom. He said that because he gets each Pod class for either two or three blocks per day (rotates per week), he can teach larger units that span several blocks in one or more days and then move onto another subject. So long as they are meeting the curricular goals in the year, the students can have the stability of two regular teachers and then travel outside of their Pods to a variety of elective teachers throughout the year. (I like this idea so much – I’ve been pondering how to work it into my visioning project for a few weeks now.)

In Socials, Mr. A. assigned all of his students the same worksheet with no differentiation. Each student was instructed to read the questions and information in the worksheet and then, using the available two textbooks in the classroom, find the relevant information to complete the answers. Mr. A. announced that it would be necessary to complete the worksheet to have good background knowledge for their next class activity – a class role play on early Canadian history at the end of the week; this finally motivated them!

Shortly after the class settled down to work, the Education Assistant arrived with a student in a very fancy wheelchair. As a teacher/teacher candidate, this was my first experience with a severely physically disabled student. This student had a cheerful, Pippy-long-stocking disposition and look about her with her bright red hair in pigtails and freckles adorned her smiling cheeks. I asked the EA if I could move to sit with them and spent the rest of the block enjoying a story about Pirates! The book was tattered, and the pages were torn, and whenever the EA’s reading paused, the student would push out an unclear passage or phrase that she had memorized. I struggled to understand her. I admired the EA’s patience and tone when she would ask the student to speak up and gently wipe the dripping saliva off the girl’s sore chin. It was vastly different from true inclusion. This student was clearly not in the classroom as a peer. There was no possibility of including her in the design of that Canadian History lesson or activity. The EA had to instruct the other students to be quiet so that we could hear the student when she wanted us to know something, like to turn the page back or to show me something in the pictures. Mr. A. did come over and ask her how she was doing, and he asked her what her plan was at the beginning of the class. He “approved” the reading of the pirate book, which had probably been read over a dozen times already this year.  I think about Shelley Moore’s bowling pin analogy and wonder how it applies to students like her, and it makes me excited to dive into our more specific courses in future terms.

The final block of the day whipped by. It was a Science block in Ms. E.’s room. She had the same students again that she had first thing in the morning for Math. When I arrived, Ms. E. had soft music playing on her computer with a campfire glowing on her projector screen. It was clear that she was giving it every strategy she could think of to create a calm atmosphere for this wild bunch of students. I would say overall; she was winning the war. The students settled much better into their assigned seats the second time around. She began Science with a cool little video about discoveries of ocean life to get their brains focused and did a little thumbs up-down formative assessment to make sure they were paying attention before beginning her Chemistry lesson. Using her iPad, she projected the worksheet package that she had previously given the students, reviewed what they had done before, and then demonstrated today’s work. She used explicit instruction to show the students how they could solve the next level of questions in the package. When she was done, she returned the screen to the campfire glow and put the soft ambient music back on as she rotated through the room, helping students individually again.

All-in-all it wasn’t an overly heavy day on the technology end, but I feel like it was an incredibly good day for general observations.  I have one more day at School C, and then where my next practicum placement is, is anybody’s guess for next term!

Sara McManus

School of Education, University of Northern British Columbia

EDUC 393: Foundations of Education

Melanie Baerg, M.Ed. – Lecturer

November 16, 2021

It has been over one month since my last Cross-Curricular Reflective Writing assignment and submission. My days are long and filled from early in the morning to late at night about education in one form or another.  I feel like an exhausted, giant sponge. As much as I am overwhelmed by adding this new learning experience into my life, I also enjoy and appreciate the majority of the content of my courses.  I see evidence of my learning in my practice in the classroom and elsewhere in my life. In this reflection, I would like to address the impacts of our EDUC 393 Foundations of Educations lecture on Social Justice on October 25, 2021 (Baerg, 2021) and the video conference BCTF Workshop on Professional Boundary Issues held on November 8, 2021 (Baerg, 2021).

On my drive to the campus on October 25, 2021, I chatted with a person close to me who lives in another community. Her daughter is one and a half years old right now and has an exponentially developing vocabulary. This baby was born during the start of the pandemic, and I was one of the few visitors in the first six months of the little girl’s life.  I was incredibly proud of the Mom for naturally speaking with an adult voice and verbalizing everything she did with her new baby.  In our call, the Mom inquired about reading to her toddler. Her spouse had been applying pressure to read more regularly to help their daughter become an avid reader when she grows up.  Being the Mom’s virtual support person, she was eager to hear my opinion on the subject.  I shared with her some tidbits of information Melanie Baerg had shared throughout our classes about the advances in neuroscience, and from what I had learned in my readings, I told her that I would know more about it soon.  I could not listen close enough to the YouTube presentation of The Brain Prize Presents: Stanislas Dehaene  (The Brain Prize, 2016).  After our class, I was able to call her back with a wealth of information!  I was able to explain to the Mom that her gut instinct was right. She just needs to continue to have conversations with her daughter, as she has since day one.  I told her – of course, she should have books in the house. She should encourage her daughter to touch, look and play with books. When she reads books to her daughter, the focus should be on the story, the language, and the pronunciation of the words, not necessarily teaching her to read.  I explained to her how there are twenty-six letters and 44 sounds in the English language and how it takes four different parts of the brain to read. I loved providing her with the process and phenological awareness and decoding steps, which leads to orthographic mapping.  It was empowering to share what I had learned in our EDUC 393 class from our focus on Literacy as a Social Justice issue (Baerg, 2021) in an unexpected area of my life. The Mom appreciated it too!

Another tie to the October 25, 2021 lecture on Social Justice (Baerg, 2021) occurred during a video from our EDUC 390 Observational course (Baerg, 2021) when Tom Schimmer said, “Think of assessment as relationship building, as a way to drive inclusivity, as a focus on how we nurture a culture of learning in an environment where students feel supported, they feel motivated, and they feel engaged” (Schimmer, 2018). I appreciated this statement because I philosophically agree with its sentiment.  In one of my practicums, I shared feedback with the classroom teacher on what she had done well throughout the day. (i.e., excellent use of formative assessment, great circulation of the classroom, etc.) (Curle, 2021 ).  A few minutes into our conversation, she mentioned that sometimes teaching is so natural that you don’t even recognize what you are doing until you step back and take a moment to reflect. She noted that she hadn’t been conscious of using formative assessment or the other things I mentioned, but that was precisely what she was doing.  Being inclusive is a big part of my version of “we teach who we are” (Palmer, 1997). Although to me it seems natural to include everyone, especially youth in my care, it has not been without its challenges. Until now, I have not had any formal training in diversity, equity and inclusion, such as special needs education. I have depended on observation from developing relationships and intuition to guide my action with youth.  During my two years of teaching at the alternate high school, no one told me that I had to open my classroom doors; I just knew that the only way I would reach those students to help them achieve their graduation goals was to develop a strong relationship with them.  When they really knew I cared about them and that I would be with them every step of the way – they would really open themselves up to learning. I can feel it already at the high school. The students who talk to me are learning from me; those who are mad, that their previous teacher is absent, are stuck. I am literally watching their grades drop by the day. My mind is filled with ideas on how to reach them before another week is wasted.

When I reflect on applying my learning into practice in my classroom,  I see it every day in so many ways. One way is how I love to wear my microphone now to help my two hearing disabled students. Whenever my students ask me questions about the microphone, I can respond confidently, normalizing the microphone without specifying any particular students. I don’t know if I would have been able to do that as easily in the past.  I also experienced an extremely steep learning curve in practice this past two weeks. In my TTOC position, I had the daunting task of reporting on one hundred plus high school students whom I had known for less than three weeks.  I was tremendously grateful that I spent so much time learning their names and working with them during our classroom blocks in the first two weeks. Developing these new relationships allowed me to provide feedback to their parents regarding their work habits to accompany their previous teacher’s summative evidence. During this process, I learned the designations of my students. It was incredibly frustrating to find out the particulars of these students halfway through a six-week placement. There is a fine line between figuring out the students on your own and what you need to know when you go into a classroom for more than a one-day on-call placement. In-hind sight, I wish I had known where to find the information a lot sooner. (Lesson learned.  Now, I know that each CSS classroom has a student services binder.)

The final subject area that I have chosen to reflect on is the personal boundaries between teachers and students. After attending the BCTF Professional Boundary Issues Workshop on November 8, 2021 (Balfour, 2021), I can now say that I have widened my scope of understanding regarding the professional boundaries between teachers and students. I especially appreciated the legal background knowledge, especially the Shewan case.  I am sincerely able to look back and reflect on my first Cross-Curricular Reflective Writing and now see the special position that I held as a Resource Teacher at the alternate school.  However, I did find that Shelley Belfour tended to generalize her presentation primarily towards classroom teachers to reach the widest audience. Listening to the workshop, I felt like I had already broken many of the rules in my first two years of teaching. (Really, I stopped counting how many when it went over one hand’s worth of fingers!) When I came home that night, I had to reflect on what the difference was.  One of the first things that Shelley Balfour talked about was how it is the responsibility of all teachers to support each other through the BCTF Code of Ethics #5 by addressing colleagues directly of any criticism or work-related issue like professionalism. (BC Teacher’s Federation, 2021).  Looking back at the colleagues I was surrounded by and the Administration that supervised me during my two years of teaching, I know that they all take their commitment to the BC Educator Standards and the BCTF Code of Ethics very seriously. I taught under two very different Principals. One was slightly older than I am, and the other was highly experienced and had come out of retirement to provide coverage. Both were mentors to me, and both were involved in overseeing everything that I did in the small alternate environment. The second of the two is one of the most moral and ethical persons I have ever met. I know, without a doubt, that she would have taken me aside and let me know if she felt like I was breaching any professional boundaries; instead, she wrote my reference letter to UNBC and has made future predictions on me becoming a Principal in less than ten years.

Now that I have been back in many more general classrooms, I can easily say that I am not drawn to open my personal life up to them in the same way as my alternate students. I know there are many vulnerable students in the general classroom population, but they are different somehow as a whole.  Age will undoubtedly factor into play.  I have no desire to tell a Kindergarten class much more about me than that I have two dogs named Rosie and Iris. My high school students, on the other hand, all know that I’m a student teacher, that I have a son named Duncan in Grade 10, and anyone at school last week now knows that I take every third Thursday off work to go to the hospital for Breast Cancer Treatment, so I genuinely do appreciate it when they wear their masks in my classroom.  However, there must be other factors as well, like how other schools have designated Resource Teachers and procedurally operate differently.  The size and composition of the classroom would also be factored in.  My alternate classroom only had a maximum limit of 15 students per block; often, I had fewer in a class which allowed me time and physical space to have in-depth conversations with students if they could not focus on their work.

I like that my alternate students will keep a special place in my life that other students will not have.  They needed me at that time to see them for who they were, and I did that by saying, this is who I am – an open book. I was available and made time for them.  I was safe because I allowed them to speak freely with me. Without knowing it, I was opening a space to develop a sense of belonging using the Circle of Courage (Brokenleg, 2015). Individuals, couples, and groups of students would find their way to my classroom. I couldn’t imagine what my two years would have been like had I closed myself off to them. I don’t know how I would have ever learned so much or how I would have been able to teach them as much as I did. I am, however, excited to bravely enter a world filled with all these professional boundaries with a newfound understanding of their implications for educators today.

References

Baerg, M. (2021, October 25). EDUC 393 – Foundations of Education. Social Justice, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion [Lecture]. South-Central Campus, Quesnel, BC, Canada: University of Northern British Columbia, School of Education.

Baerg, M. (2021, November 08). EDUC 393 – Foundations of Education. BCTF Workshop: Professional Boundary Issues. South-Central Campus, Quesnel, BC, Canada: University of Northern British Columbia, School of Education.

Baerg, M. (2021, November 16). Observational Practicum. South-Central Campus, Quesnel, BC, Canada: University of Northern British Columbia, School of Education.

Balfour, S. (2021, November 08). Professional Boundary Issues: Teacher/Student Relationships. ([. Conference], Ed.) BCTF.

BC Teacher’s Federation. (2021). BCTF Code of Ethics. Retrieved November 16, 2021, from https://www.bctf.ca/about-bctf/bctf-ethics

Brokenleg, M. (2015, October 26). First Nations Principles of Learning. [Video}. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PgrfCVCt_A

Curle, A. (2021 , November 9). Lakeview Elementary School. Quesnel, BC, Canada.

Palmer, P. J. (1997, Nov. – Dec.). The Heart of a Teacher: Identity and Integrity in Teaching. Vol. 29(No. 6.), pp. 14-21. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/40165413

Schimmer, T. (2018, Septemeber 14). Assesment Literacy in BC. Province of BC. [YouTube]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7C20alZElI&t=5s

The Brain Prize. (2016, November 01). The Brain Prize Presents: Stanislas Dahaene. BrainFog.org. [YouTube]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlYZBi_07vk

 

 

Observational Report #3
Mrs. Sara McManus
School of Education, University of Northern British Columbia
EDUC 390: Observational Practicum
Melanie Baerg, M.Ed. – Lecturer
November 14, 2021

On November 2, 2021, I returned for my second observational practicum at School B. I was looking forward to our day at the junior school, as I had recently spent the day as a TTOC in one of the observation classrooms. My Teacher Candidate partner and I hoped to switch “Pods”, as we had such different experiences in the first observation, and I really wanted to meet the teacher who I had subbed for to see her with her students. Unfortunately, the school administrator denied our requests to swap places for the day. Although the Principal understood my reasoning and the value of such an opportunity, she could not articulate a good reason for not making the change; it felt like a “because I said so” situation. Therefore, I spent the day with the two Pod teachers I had previously observed. They explained that if the Principal had switched our observations without their consent, she would have likely received push-back. Fortunately, these two Pod Teachers are union reps, and they will see what they can arrange for our next visit at School B. For ease of reference, I will call the Pod Teachers, Ms. S. for the Science & Math Teacher, and Ms. E. for the English and Socials Teacher.

The second school I went to for this observation report was School C on November 9, 2021; this was also my second visit at this “affluent-sporty” elementary school. I independently observed in a Grade 6-7 classroom for the day with a teacher who is the same age as I am. I will call her Ms. Q. because we graduated from Quesnel Secondary School together. Although we were not close friends during high school, it was very nice to spend the day discussing education with someone who has the same memory of how school was as I do. On my day of observations, the grade 7 students wrote their Foundational Skills Assessments during the morning. Ms. Q. stated that it would be an unusual morning in her class; however, I found it engaging to observe.

I had to engage the classroom teachers in conversations to draw out information from them for both focal points: teaching for equity, diversity and inclusion, and professional boundaries. In my email dated November 3, 2021, I wrote briefly regarding the Universal Design Learning used at School B. I will weave other highlights regarding this focal point throughout the remainder of my report. However, I do not have anything specific to write about on professional boundaries at this time. I do intend to reflect extensively on this issue in my upcoming Cross-Curricular Reflexive Writing assignment for EDUC 393.

The first block at School C was Science 8. Ms. S. placed a note on her door, and we moved to the Science Lab room which was four doors down the hall. Apparently, that was a very confusing instruction for grade 8’s to follow on a Tuesday morning. The second half of the class was a hands-on activity allowing students to try a microscope for the very first time. The students selected five slides to view and were asked to draw and describe what they saw through the microscope. All the students loved it. That wasn’t my favourite part of the class; I loved the first half of the class more. I love to watch authentic teaching and practical techniques that I can apply in the future. I really love it when it feels right—an ah-ha moment that’s putting it all together! Ms. S. began her class with a scanned copy of the previous day’s assignment on the smartboard. Using the pen to write the answers on the screen, she worked her way through each question with the students sharing their answers aloud. She thoughtfully included all the students in reviewing the assignment; this kept the entire class engaged and actively learning and provided for both visual and verbal learners. Students who were missing the day before were to write down the answers and note that they were absent. This structure allowed most students the opportunity to learn individually and then review as a group. For those who had not finished the assignment, this allowed them to continue their learning rather than skip over it as incomplete. Students who had made a mistake were to correct their answers but also needed to record their actual score.

I was so please when I saw Ms. Q. at School C do something similar in her morning work with the Grade 6 students. Each student had a general knowledge quiz that they were working on when they arrived from a lesson the day previous. Ms. Q. had a scan of the quiz ready to go and reviewed each question one at a time with the students, in the same manner to reinforce their learning before moving on to the next topic. In both classes, students marked their work and submitted it to the teacher with a score on the top. (So smart – two for the price of one:  review and assessment!)

Ms. S.’s second block was Math with the same Pod students; this was a fantastic hands-on lesson on fractions with Cuisenaire Rods. (She gave the same lesson later in the afternoon with another class of students using fraction circles. It was great to see how either tool could work.) In this block, I learned how to use new technology and a new way to teach fractions without paper! It was an inclusive lesson in which all students could participate easily, but you could see that it was still challenging to everyone on some level. At School C, Ms. Q. also made certain that her math was diversifiable for all her students. She used a scope and sequence program called Math Minute. Every morning, she front-loads her Math in the early morning, allowing the students to work independently to try all the questions. Then before lunch the entire class works through all the questions as mini lessons. Both of these teachers use formative assessment to drive their lessons—neither one moving forward until the class is at the necessary level of understanding to move on.

One thing that has weighed heavily on my mind since my observation of Ms. S.’s fraction lesson is the stark contrast in the teaching philosophies between the junior and high school math departments. I know that my insight is limited, and I do not have the whole picture, as I have only observed one junior classroom two times. However, my experience teaching Math 8-11 in an alternate setting and now in the main high school is giving me a unique perspective to see both sides. From my perspective it is plain to see that the elementary and junior schools have generally accepted the movement towards more formative assessment and the use of hands-on and non-paper-based ways of learning mathematical concepts; whereas the high school is heavily based on summative assessments (up to 80%) with workbook/sheet practice (sometimes with no marking or feedback to the students). I have found it difficult as a teacher moving from the alternate setting, where students were always able to improve their marks through corrections and there were no tests, into the main high school, where tests are everything and “drill and kill” is the status-quo. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for students coming up through primary, intermediate, and junior school learning math concepts and being assessed so differently than what they experience when they reach grade 10.

Moving away from Science and Math, the next block I observed at School B was an English 8 class with Ms. E. When I came into the room, she had all the overhead lights turned off. There was a single lamp glowing beside her fish tank, and the only other lights in the room were from her computer monitor and the smartboard, which projected a scanned copy of the story she planned to read; this was clearly not her first rodeo. She knew that by reading the story aloud and having the students follow along on the smartboard, she would engage more students in the story. During her reading, she would pause and point out words, phrases, and other key elements that the students might need to remember for their assignment later. Ms. E. thoughtfully engaged her students in brief questions where it was appropriate, like what they thought would happen next. In the same way, Ms. Q. also used this technique in her class during her Health lesson, although she did not have the dramatic dimmed lighting. She also added in the opportunity for students to take turns reading. After each of these lessons, both teachers talked with me about the importance of reading aloud to ensure that all students have access to the content. I do not think that either of the teachers were implying that students didn’t need to be able to read, but they were both aware that the reading levels in their classes were very diverse. In order to include all students in an active class discussion or group work, it was the best way to ensure all students had the same information in the same amount of time. This is a scary idea. It almost feels like defeat in a way. It shines a little light on how students can manage to get to secondary school without being able to read to grade level. On the other hand, how could you operate an inclusive classroom effectively and allow students to feel success without finding strategies like these group readings?

To conclude this observation report, I want to add that my practicum notes are filled with little tips and tricks that I have picked up. Here are a few of my favourites from these observations: