Station Stop #5

I am back!! Finished up my pre-serviced teaching and now we are back in the books ourselves. My five week teaching experience was fantastic. I was back at my old stomping grounds with one of my favourite teachers. He had two calculus classes, one grade 11 precalculus and one grade 12 precalculus class. Since I am very strong in math and my cooperating teacher knows this, I got to jump in right away teaching the grade 11s on my first day. By the second week I was teaching both his grade 11 and grade 12 classes. Because calculus is a course rarely offered in schools and when it is it is taken by an experienced teacher, we did not see me teaching it to be helpful. Luckily instead of sitting through both calculus classes I was able to jump over a room and teach a grade 10 precalculus class.

The students were awesome as well. Because I have been coaching grade nine volleyball since I left high school, I already had a good rapport with the students. My cooperating teacher warned me about the student that gave him the hardest time and since I coached him in grade nine he gave me less problems and stayed involved in the class.

The most used piece of technology in my class was the smart board and computer pair. During the summer the math department got together and made a set of printed notes for all math grade 9-12. Doing this on notebook it allowed them to use the smart board for class. Also they were able to print off and copy the notes to make packages for each chapter to give to the students so they were not writing all class.

One thing I learned about technology while I was there was that from their photocopy machine in the staff room you can scan an image and email it directly to the computer in the classroom you are in. I found this really helpful while teaching a few units because I added some notes and images to the already made packages. The copy machine allowed me to copy these pages but then they were still not on the smart board for me to teach with. By being able to scan my pages and email them to my computer made it easy for me to add them to the smart board notes.

I am really thankful for all the people that I got to work with. I got lots of tips, criticism, and resources that will be very useful in the future.

Back to the grind. Stay posted!!