For my practicum I was in a grade 1/2 classroom at Springwood Elementary.
I decided to do a math lesson for one of my formals, this lesson focused on 2D shapes. I wanted to use art in this lesson so I decided to make shape monsters with the students, where the students would cut up shapes and make a monster out of it. This lesson had a written component where the students were able to write about their monster; what its name was, what shapes/colours they used, and what it liked to do in it’s free time. At the end, we had a sharing circle and all the students were able to share their work.
Making the monsters was hectic. I compiled a bunch of different shapes for each table to ensure students weren’t clustering in one spot. But this didn’t subside from the chaos that developed. Two students struggled at the beginning of this lesson so I chatted with them a bit and then gave them space to process. After a little bit of time they came back to their work and were able to create something that they were proud of. When it came time to share together these two students lit up when telling the story of their shape monsters. although the written component wasn’t very successful, I believe that the lesson itself was extremely successful, and offered a very high ceiling for the more creative students while keeping a low floor for the students who were struggling with this project.
Leading up to this lesson, I ran a couple lessons to prepare their minds to think creatively about shapes and monsters. The first was a short lesson where they learned a little bit about me and went through the different shape names. The other lessons were centred around two books, one on shapes, and one on monsters.
I had so much fun in this practicum and enjoyed meeting some amazing students. This age group is definitely the age group I enjoy the most at this point but I’m looking forwards to working with other age groups and getting more comfortable teaching intermediate students.