November 16, 2023: “Graphic Scores pt. 2” Gr.

5 Music

This lesson was probably one of the most successful I have had since beginning
practicum. I wasn’t as confident going into it as the lesson plan I created for it wasn’t my
strongest, but the students really dove right in and made the material come to life. After the first
lesson, I was curious how much material would actually be retained from the first lesson—as
only a few students participated—and by how many of the students. I was pleasantly surprised to
have multiple new students offer information when I asked about the information presented in
the previous lesson. When I asked for volunteers to perform the “Thunderstorm” score we had
looked at, I had lots of students willing to participate and share their ideas of how it could be
interpreted. In the actual activity portion of the class, I was so excited to see all of the creative
ideas that groups were coming up with, and to see students that historically did not always
participate in music classes engaged in the activity. In their final performances of the scores they
developed, I was so impressed by the ideas that students came up with: for example, the group
that used sandpaper blocks to create the sounds of skates on ice for a piece titled “Hockey
Night.” I allowed students to pick their own groups— with the understanding that I would
rearrange if needed—and it ended up working really well. I’m always a bit hesitant to allow
students to choose their own groups as I don’t want to create more problems/exclude students,
but I think this was an excellent example of students being allowed to take responsibility for their
own learning and doing well within it.

November 20, 2023: “Netball: Introduction” Gr. 6 Phys Ed

This was a lesson that I really struggled with, because I felt as though none of the
classroom strategies that I had been developing up until this point transferred over to the gym.
Netball is quite a complicated game, with different roles and zones of travel assigned to each
player. After I got them to the gym and started to explain the rules to the students, it was
immediately apparent to me that this was not going to be successful. There were a limited
number of students who were actually listening to me explain the rules, and when I tried to
redirect some students, it felt like I just lost five more. Being in the gym, some students didn’t
want to sit quietly and listen to me; they wanted to get moving immediately. Because of this,
there was a great deal of confusion when I handed out the pinnies with the netball position letters
on the back, and I ended up explaining the same things over probably ten times. In the end, I
threw my hands up in the air a little bit, and decided that they were moving, working as a team,
and having fun: they weren’t following the positions of netball, but they were checking the big
learning outcomes of Phys Ed. It was a really good learning experience for me in completely
reshaping a consecutive lesson, and building off of the challenges of a lesson outcome. Going
into the next lesson, I plan to start the lesson in the classroom to explain the rules, show a
demonstrative video, and answer questions, in a space where I feel more in control of extraneous
volume and classroom management. Also, I immediately bought a whistle when I finished for
the day!

November 23, 2023: “Sky Science: The Sun” Gr. 6 Science

This was such a fun lesson to teach. I really enjoy the topic of space, and remember
loving this unit myself when I was in grade 6, and the students seemed really enthusiastic about
it as well! They had some fantastic questions about the material they were learning, some of
which was far beyond grade 6 science—such as the difference between nuclear fission and
nuclear fusion. I started the lesson by reading the picture book “The Sun is Kind of a Big Deal”
by Nick Seluk, and instructed students to take notes on their desk for the brain dump activity
following. After the brain dump, I shared some of my own “fun facts” about the Sun, and Sarah
had the great idea to practice reading out these very large numbers as that correlates with their
Math unit. For the section on Sun safety, I showed the students the pinhole camera that I had
made: I had originally thought of having each student make their own camera for the classroom
activity, but abandoned the idea as I thought it was too easy/boring. However, the students were
super excited about it, so maybe it would have been a good activity to do with them! For the
students who didn’t have a chance to interact directly with it, I left it on the back counter for
them to play around with. Before the students left for the day, I asked them to write two things
they learned in the class on their desks. Nearly all of the students wrote about the little video clip
that I included of the “Solar death ray,” where a man concentrates sunlight down to a small point
to burn a hole in a bowling ball. It clearly left a deep impression on them! Throughout the class,
there were a lot of students speaking out of turn; they had so many ideas, and were determined to
share them. This did make it challenging at times to move forward or hear other students who I
had asked to speak, and I think I should have focused more on managing this in fairness to all
students.