During this past year, I worked with Kyle Pahigian and Kate Sheppard in room 8, teaching geometry and numeracy. Starting out in the beginning of the year, I was mostly helping in the classrooms, providing extra guidance to students and doing any tasks either Kyle or Kate needed complete. Kyle had me helping out with grading early on in the year, and on Wednesdays I was given the task of teaching on my own without the help of Kyle or Kate in the room. This was incredibly nerve-wracking after only 2 days of being in the building, but it was incredible experience that set me up well for teaching later on and helped build my status as a teacher to the students. Both the geometry and numeracy classes were honors level, and while the classes were untracked, students with IEPs were generally put in 8A and 10A to ensure ease of focus for special education teachers.

I took over both geometry sections starting October 24, 2022. I had control over the lesson planning and grading with gradual release from Kyle in terms of support and reminders. As time went on with numeracy, I slowly took over more responsibility in the classroom, through running starters, correcting work, and even running lessons that Kate prepared right up until my takeover. I fully took over planning and the class as a whole on February 14th, 2023.

The class sizes ranged from 16 to 21 students, with 8A and 10A having 21and 10B having 16. The classes shifted around a bit throughout the year, but luckily since there’s only two classes per grade, things weren’t too tricky with the shifts.

The room I taught all my classes was room 8, which is shared by Kyle and Kate, as well as various other classes on Wednesdays. The room is almost always set up in groups of three with the intention of promoting collaboration and ensuring that if a student is out, students will still have someone to work with. We do assigned seating in both classes to find new pairings that lead to fantastic productivity in students and help foster a positive classroom community by building trust amongst students and creating new bonds.

We have a TV available in the room for casting any slides or notes. However, due to my student teacher status, I was unable to utilize it, which created a challenge for some students that struggled to see the board. We made this work through using a projector, which did have the benefit of allowing me to write on the whiteboard while the problem we go over was projecting. We will also utilize the ELMO as a resource for going over any work or enlarging any physical manipulative. We try to have seats positioned in a way so that all students can see the board well enough. It’s not a perfect arrangement, but we made do with the best we could. Problem-solving put in action!

In geometry, we start each class with a joke of the day to open up class on a light note and start getting those problem-solving gears turning! We try picking jokes that relate to math in a way or have a play on words that require a little bit of problem-solving to detect the answer, getting students in the mathematical thinking mindset without stressing them out too much. Then we have a quick mindful moment to get students centered and ready to learn while listening to nature sounds or calming music before diving into a warmup. In numeracy, we start each class with a starter that works to provide quick practice on a skill that’s important for the day’s lesson. Often, we’ll play calming music to a timer so students know to get to work but not to stress too hard. Then we’ll go over the starter, usually having students do the problems on the board to build confidence and make them feel more in charge of their own learning.

My classes have a heavy focus on collaborative learning and problem-solving, as well as high expectations of students doing the thinking. Students are in charge of their own learning and are responsible for helping their peers feel confident as well, whether that be through good group work, going over material together, asking questions, or even as simple as being friendly.