Prac is underway

I have completed 3 days on prac and so far so good. I have a lovely grade 2 class without any major behaviour management issues. I am enjoying observing the Mentor Teacher and how she engages and teaches the children. I have noted many different techniques that she uses to transition children from one task to the next. The main one to regain their attention after a transition is the rhythmic clapping. She also uses the praise approach where she will praise a child who is doing the right thing by describing what she is doing i.e Sally is doing a wonderful job by sitting at her desk with her eyes on me. She isn't fidgeting or walking around, I can tell that she is ready to learn.

The use of ICT's is varied in that a small group of learners will use the computers during the reading groups. There is a smart board in the classroom, but as the teacher has not been trained on it yet it hasn't been used a great deal. During second break today I had a bit of a play around with it and found quite a few interactive websites that teach about insects (the unit of work for this term). When I have the opportunity to teach the class I intend to utilise some of the these websites so as to gain the engagement of the entire class straight away. PowerPoints will also be a useful ICT tool that I could incorporate into my lessons, the use of different sounds and moving pictures will give the children more insight in the life cycles of insects. Today we also had a computer class. During this class the children were asked to, in paint, draw an insect and using the text tool label the parts of an insect such as head, thorax, abdomen, 6 legs and antennae.

The children really enjoyed their class in the computer and look forward to any work that utilised ICTs within the classroom.