Author: cmassier Page 1 of 4

To start off every morning, this grade two class completes “morning work.” Morning work consists of a worksheet that covers both numeracy and literacy topics. As you can see, this sheet requires students to notice the weather, figure out the plural version of a word, mix mistakes in a sentence, count base ten blocks and much more.

Math

Curricular competencies: Develop mental math strategies (the add and subtract portion) and Communicate concretely, pictorially, symbolically, and by using spoken or written language to express, describe, explain, justify, and apply mathematical ideas.

Content: Understanding the relationship between digit places and their value (“write in expanded form”), addition and subtraction, and more.

ELA

Curricular competencies: Engage actively as listeners, viewers, and readers. After students complete this sheet, they go over it as a class and students are allowed to exchange ideas and perspectives

Content: Conventions, common practices in punctuation and capitalization.

After they have gone over morning work, they gather on the carpet and fill out this board. The underlined letters were not initially filled out. The special helper got to call on friends to come fill in the blanks.

This connects to the big idea: Through listening and speaking, we connect with others and share our world.

With Saint Patrick’s Day right around the corner, it was only fitting to read a book about luck! This book is about a clever woman named Fiona who outsmarts the leprechaun king to restore luck to the land of Ireland. The teacher of this class read the book out loud to the students and then had the students complete a writing activity that went along with the story.

While we ran out of time, I was still able to take a look at the sheet the teacher had intended the students to fill out. It required the students to write about and draw what they would do with some “leprechaun luck.”

Curricular Competencies: Use sources of information and prior knowledge (what do they already know about luck?), engage actively as listeners, viewers, and readers (how well did they listen during the reading of the story?)

Content: Metacognitive strategies: talking and thinking about learning (what did they take away from the story to help them complete the worksheet?), letter formation: legible printing with spacing between words.

The book that “changed everything” for me was Love You Forever by Robert Munsch, illustrated by Sheila McGraw. I remember my mum reading this one to me multiple times and I would notice her tear up and feel her holding me extra tight. She would try and hold the tears back so I wouldn’t notice. But I always did and would hold her tight too. At the time, I didn’t fully understand why it made her sad, but I do now. I was her last baby.

Writing samples are pieces of writing done by a student that teachers use for assessment purposes. It can be any kind of writing, like an essay (for older grades), a story, a poem, or a journal entry. Writing samples are gathered by teachers to assess a student’s writing skills, including their ability to communicate ideas effectively and use correct grammar and punctuation.

The K-12 Student Reporting Policy refers to the guidelines and procedures that schools must follow for reporting student progress, grades, and other relevant information to parents, students, and other stakeholders. This policy outlines how and when student progress will be communicated, in what format (for example: report cards), and what information needs to be included in these reports.

Page 30 outlines how the proficiency scale is used and what teachers need to do to effectively provide descriptive feedback and evidence. This scale is based on four levels of achievement: Emerging (beginning to demonstrate the required knowledge, skills, and understanding.), Developing (progressing towards demonstrating the required knowledge, skills, and understanding but has not yet fully achieved them.), Proficient (consistently demonstrates the required knowledge, skills, and understanding.), and Extending 9demonstrates a deep understanding and can apply their knowledge and skills in complex and unfamiliar situations.)

This is a sample literacy report card comment I wrote for my assessment course. It demonstrates descriptive feedback and clearly states where the student is currently at with their learning as well as suggestions for improvement!

In the grade 1 class I have been visiting for the past 3 weeks, they started each morning with a UFLI lesson. The way this teacher organized her teaching of UFLI honestly blew me away. The students knew the routine and she dealt with little to no behaviors each time I was in.

First, the students would gather on the carpet at the front of the room and participate in the lesson taught and shown on board. The portion of the lesson you see here is the students reading the word on the board and then the teacher would go “what does it say if we take away the st?”

Then, the students would head back to their tables and listen for words or sounds being called out to write on their individual whiteboards. This carpet-to-desk transition would happen about 3 times throughout the lesson and not once was there an issue with students getting off task.

I also wanted to note the phonics display bulletin board in this classroom. It is a great visual for students to help with sounding out and pronouncing sounds. I really liked how this teacher covered up the ones they have not gotten to yet as I believe it helps students not get confused or overwhelmed.

I got lucky and this visit happened to be on the 100th day of school!

As you can see, one of the activities the class did was complete a “When I am 100 Years Old” worksheet. I really liked how this teacher did a guided drawing for the portrait and they created a list of answers on the board as a class to refer to. I enjoyed circulating around the room while students completed the worksheet and talking to them about their choices!

This is a digital story vine I created for the book The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch. The cool thing about story vines is that they can be created with yarn and art supplies, but also digitally using platforms like Canva.

There once was a beautiful Princess who wore a stunning dress and had plans to marry the majestic Prince Ronald.

One day, a big fire-breathing dragon came along and burnt down the Princess’ castle. Burning all her dresses and kidnapping Prince Ronald.

All she had left to wear was a brown paper bag. Filled with anger, the Princess made her way to the dragons’ cave to save the Prince.

Once she arrived at the cave, she manipulated the dragon and tired him out to the point where he passed out from exhaustion. This was her chance to save Prince Ronlad and finally get married!

When she managed to find and release the Prince, he did not react how she expected. He was hung up on the fact that she was dirty and wearing a paper bag. He was disgusted and made that known to her.

Instead of getting upset, she called the Prince a bum and ran off into the sunset. The two did not get married.

MagicSchool is an AI platform that has MANY tools. I only explored the teacher version, but there is also a student version. The top tools that interested me were the chatbot (similar to ChatGPT), the report card comment generator, the text summarizer, and the unit/lesson plan generator. As mentioned before, there are many, many more.

The report card comment generator is simple and easy to use. The products it produces are definitely usable and can take a huge weight off of teachers’ backs when report card season rolls around. In my opinion, I believe it is difficult to get a personal enough comment from AI, but it can provide a really nice framework and cut the comment-writing process down significantly.

For the text summarizer, I tested it out by copying and pasting a paragraph from Wikipedia on why we get so much snow in Canada and asked it to summarize it into 5 bullet points. It did a really great job and provided exactly what I asked for. I feel that this tool is definitely useful for both students and teachers. The grade 5 ELA curriculum mentions previewing text; summarizing; making inferences and this can be an awesome tool to model summarizing and help get students started.

The unit plan generator is probably the most useful tool for teachers in my opinion. Even being a pre-service teacher, coming up with, and writing out unit plans can be grueling. Having something like this to help with the process can be a game changer. Let me show you what it created for a grade 5 unit on simple machines.

In the photo above, you will see that I put in very little information for it to go off of. Here is what it generated for me:

As you can see, it produced a very vague base of a unit to get a teacher started. While it did not create a detailed, ready-to-use unit, it created a base that can still cut the unit planning time by almost half.

Project Read AI is a new website that schools can sign up for to promote phonetic awareness and comprehension. This site is considered similar to UFLI, but also useable for intermediate levels. I saw it being used in grade 5. Students log in using their class code and select their name to begin. An automated voice will give the student(s) verbal instructions like “Read me this sentence” and then the students are to record themselves reading it aloud. The program will listen to the student saying it and find which words the student needs more practice on and give tips and have them repeat it.

The use of this program connects to the BC English Language Arts Curriculum in a couple of different ways.

Summary: Roxanne discusses her over thirty-year engagement with Indigenous children’s literature, focusing on representations of First Nations peoples in literature for children and young adults. She was motivated by personal connections to the Sweetgrass Cree Nation and a desire for realistic portrayals, she talks about her experiences as a librarian, and her role in building a diverse library for the Little Red River School.

Let’s start with the basics: why does having authentic sources matter? For me, it’s about making sure that every child can connect with the books they read and see themselves in the stories. Authentic sources also play a role in educating students about various cultures and ways of life, offering them the opportunity to explore and learn at their own pace. Ultimately, it’s about sparking curiosity, encouraging questions, and fostering a love for continuous learning. It also fits under the grade six social studies curriculum: “Apply criteria to evaluate selected sources for credibility and reliability”

From my perspective, an authentic source comes from credible and genuine authors, maintaining accuracy to the topic. When the source explores a specific culture, it has authenticity if it is written by individuals belonging to that culture or has received explicit permission from someone within the cultural community. This standard ensures reliability and a respectful representation, fostering a deeper understanding of diverse perspectives.

They had an unofficial classroom library. There were 2 shelves (one pictured) with a variety of fiction and non-fiction books. From my understanding, they were all easily accessible for students to use during soft start in the am or at any other reading times.

This activity that the students work on each morning was something I am definitely going to add to my teacher’s toolbox. Students were given a booklet (pictured above) and were required to come up with as many words ( 3, 4, 5, and 6+ letter words) using only the series of letters provided as possible. The main task was to figure out the big word, the word that utilizes all the letters provided. If students finished early, they could work on the last page. An activity like this allows students to expand their word and letter recognition and practice spelling in a fun and independent manner!

I also believe it is important to note that, as a class, they worked together to complete the Wordle. They do this every morning. Wordle is a daily puzzle that promotes problem-solving skills and in this case teamwork. I personally do the Wordle each day and it has enhanced my memory as well as problem-solving skills, even as an adult.

For my own classroom, having a little library is one of the things at the top of my list for promoting literacy. I believe having an area with easily accessible and interchangeable literature is one of the easiest ways for students to engage in reading. For my classroom library, I would ideally like to change the books out monthly and cater to my student’s interests by building meaningful relationships and doing a book survey.

I plan to have word walls up in my classroom. I would include a wall with simple words, a wall with adjectives, nouns, and verbs, and a transition word wall. These would all be created by the students, using their ideas and artwork!

One other idea I have for promoting literacy in my own classroom is a book-of-the-month bulletin board. Each month, my students will pitch their favourite book they’ve read that month to the class and we will all vote on which one we like most. The chosen book and author will be on display for that month!