Throughout my pre-internship 8-weeks I have focused on forming relationships with my students along with inclusion and diversity. It was not easy at the beginning but once I was able to form meaningful relationships with my students I was able to create lesson plans that have a connection to each student. For my final lesson Lesson #8 in the eight weeks with my grade 1’s and 2’s we talked about traditions all over the world and some traditions that we have hear in Canada. We do have some students with indigenous backgrounds so we were given to opportunity to talk about indigenous culture and traditions around the holidays. I thought this was especially good for the students to be able to connect as well as get an understanding of their classmates cultures.
I found that the students were very engaged when we are talking about all of the different cultures and ways to celebrate the holiday season here in Canada and around the world. For our one student who is EAL he seemed to be very excited when we were talking about the Philippines because that is where he is from he mentioned. Taking about the Indigenous ways around the holiday we got to hear from a student about what her family does for the holidays.
I have found that I do not make many connections to First Nations and Indigenous culture and it is something that I would really like to work towards. I do believe that it is extremely important to talk about and incorporate in as many lessons as possible. I found that doing many traditions around the world the students became interested in each other as well as trying to find out their own traditions in their families.
Along with relationships I have an a major focus on inclusion and diversity in my classroom. In also all of my lessons I have made sure to focus on the adaptions and ways to differentiate my lessons to be sure that every student has the opportunity to participate as well as be successful. In my lesson #5 I got the students to create a booklet about traditions that they have. This was very beneficial for the students to look into their own traditions as well as see what traditions are found in the classroom.
After having the opportunity to build relationships with my students I realized that they are all at different levels in how they work and how they are able to take in instruction. I started off the lesson by talking about traditions and getting the students to recap on their previous knowledge. I had to use a variety of instructional strategies at the beginning to be sure that all of my students were able to understand all of the directions. I have made sure that I took into consideration that all of my students are not able to learn just by verbal cues so I made sure to have examples as well as an opportunity to do the task together. By using instructional strategies that are not seen in the classroom will allow for a stronger engagement from the students. It is important to show the students that it is okay to not learn the same way everyday.
Overall I have tried by best to incorporate all of our diversities into my lessons as well as all of the students even if there are some students who do not spend all day in the class. I find that it is important to try to include everyone and try to teach to engage everyone so then there is a better engagement rate in the classroom. It has become clear to me that teaching with diverse instructions as well as an open minded way benefits the students who may need extra help. Social justice does not mean it has to be something out of the ordinary. It just means creating something that can be engaging for all of the students and help them understand that their learning and their way of learning matters.
Karlee Jensen's Elementary Education Blog 