Miss+Smith

​**Hi, I am Ms. Smith. I am a third year students at the University of Regina. I am currently in the Bachelor of Education program, specializing in Elementary Education. I hope to complete my Bachelor of Arts as well. I am looking forward to this three-week teaching block! I have a bunch of exciting things planned and hope everyone enjoys them! **
 * My Thoughts: ** __Friday, March 26__
 * I cannot believe this was our last day! The time has absolutely flown by. Today we finished up our final project for science which was to come up with a new invention that would help people deal with weather. Everyone's turned out well! I am very impressed with how well everyone worked today. This afternoon flew by with finishing projects, watching a movie, and having a bit of a farewell. I played my guitar for the class and the compliments I was given put a huge smile on my face. I will really miss everyone at Wascana! I wish our time here could be longer but alas we must go back to classes ourselves. Thank you everyone for welcoming us into your classroom and into your school. :)**

__Thursday, March 25__
 * Today I taught a phys ed class for the first time. I had planned to try out a few different challenges with the whole group but we only got through two of them as the participation of the class was lacking. Our first challenge was the human knot, the girls figured out what to do and completed the challenge successfully twice! The boys had a bit more difficulty altough I know they could have also completed it had they worked together. The second challenge was to stand in a circle facing the back of the person in front of you and once everyone is in a tight enough circle everyone is to sit down. This should work so that everyone is sitting on the thighs of ther person behind them. This is going to take a few more tries before the class will be able to complete this challenge successfully. I would have liked to have tried the other challenges I had planned, however that just did not happend today.**

__Wednesday, March 24__
 * We worked on something quite different in our social class today. Sometimes we can run into a lot of stress in our lives and some days we get angry and worked up, so today we tried out some different strategies to calm ourselves down and to help us relax. We worked in the breakout room so we would have lots of room to lay down and spread out. Everyone lay down and listened quietly with their eyes closed to relaxing music. Once everyone had lay down for a minute or two we sat up and stretched out. After that everyone lay back down and with their eyes closed released all the tension in their bodies, breathed deeply, and did some visualizations. By the end of class it seemed that almost everyone was well-relaxed and were quite calm and quiet. Since everyone cooperated so well I pulled out my guitar and played a song as a thank you for their participation.**

__Monday, March 22__
 * Today we continued with another science class. Since there was only this class and one on Friday to make it through the unit, we needed to get started on our final project. Hopefully we can get this done in time to finish our jeopardy game. For a final project about weather and the inventions humans have devloped because of weather, students will be inventors! Each student is required to come up with a new invention that would help with the weather. Once everyone has their invention decided on, they will create an advertisement about it. The first part, the worksheet, is to be completed by Thursday and we will complete the assignment from there.**

__Friday, March 19__
 * I taught science today. We have been working on weather, and more specifically, the different things that humans have invented to deal with different types of weather. To help students identify different items we played jeopardy. This versions was a little different though; students worked in theirs groups to come up with an answer to every question and each group with a correct answer got the points for the question. We did not get to complete the game and I hope that we will have time to do so next week.**

__Thursday, March 18__
 * Today we worked on using our GPS's again. We worked slowly through the steps to entering in a location or waypoint and the groups then entered in the first location we would go to. Once that was all good, we went outside! It took a minute or two for the GPS's to get a signal but soon we were off. We ran into a large obstacle, the school, and it did not take long for the students to decide that they just needed to go around. The location was found! It was a great class and everyone participated well.**

__Wednesday, March 17__
 * Happy St. Patrick's Day! Today we spent our health class finishing up our repsonses to the song "I Will Survive". I had students hand in short descritions about thier arp pieces and why they decided to create what they did. Many of them are quite in depth and I am very impressed! We will be moving on to something different but just as much fun next week for health.**

__Tuesday, March 16__
 * This was the day we finally got to go outside and use the GPS! It was a little chaotic at times and our time was limited, but it was lots of fun. Next class we will also be outside (Thursday) but this time we will be going from location to location as a group. We still need some practice with the GPS and hopefully this will help with the understanding a bit. I'm excited to get back outside again!**

__Monday, March 15__ Here are some of the things that mentioned:
 * Today must have been a Monday! The class had a few issues settling down this morning, especially after Ms. Haire's exciting art class. We had to take a good chunk of my science class to remind ourselves of some of the expectations that were not being met. Once we got through that though, everyone participated very well in a brainstorming activity about the different types of weather patterns and phenomena that exist. The list was quite extensive, well done!

Once we finished that each group looked at a different weaher-related disaster that has happened recently somewhere in the world. Each group discussed what people would have to consider if they lived in an area with this type of weather and how it might affect those who live in that area. We will continue this lesson on Thursday.**

__Thursday, March 11__ I had asked the class to look through some books about different weather patterns and then we brainstormed on the board all the items we could come up with. The list included things like hats, boots, umbrella, first aid kit, shoes, sun screen, sunglasses, toques, etc. I think we came up with over 30 items! Everyone picked an item and then created it to fit Travelling Timmy. Starting tomorrow, different groups will be given a forecast for where Timmy will be and they will need to "dress" him accordingly. I wonder where he will be next...**
 * The class I taught today was an introduction into our science unit on Weather and the technologies that have been developed to help people deal with weather. Travelling Timmy was introduced today. He is a character that will be "travelling" around the world for the next two weeks and we had to pack his suitcase.



__Wednesday, March 10__
 * Today I taught the my second Phys. Ed. class. I thought it went great! We learned how to use hand-help GPS (Global Positioning Devices). We will get to use these later outside to navigate. The students caught on very quickly and I don't think we will have to do much catch-up next week before we go outside. I am extremely excited to start using them again!**


 * I want to say great job to everyone who is my Literature Circle! Keep up the good work, and the book only gets better.**

__Tuesday, March 9__
 * During health class today we listened to a great song called "I Will Survive" by Stephanie Bentley. It fits right in with our Survival Unit. Everyone in the class listened to it a few times and then responded to the music through a piece of visual art. Students painted, drew, and coloured amazing pictures that represented how the song made them feel and what it made them think about. We did not have enough time for everyone to finish so we will finish up during the next health class.**

__Monday, March 8__
 * Today we started out three week teaching block! It went really well and the students helped me get over my nerves. I had a lot of fun teaching Phys Ed. Our Phys Ed classes will be focused on Outdoor Living Skills. Today we learned how to tie three different knots. I though learning the three would take all class, but it turned out I should have had some more there! I will bring some more sheets on knots to do in spare time!

Click the link to see the knots we learned:**