As said before in a previous blog, this practicum made me slightly nervous, and I think I let that get in the way and spent a lot of time planning and assessing and not much time in between taking photos and documenting the end result of my hard work and the student’s hard work. I planned a paint chip poetry activity for the Secondary Humanities class and decided that it was organized enough and well thought out enough for me to bring it into the classroom. The word “Poetry” seems to be very scary to students because they associate it with structured, difficult, and confusing terms to study. This activity helped break the ice into the creative unit I had planned, and I was so proud of what all the students had come up with. Some students even asked if they could use multiple paint chips and I was more than happy to give them as many as they wanted. My guidelines were that they had to use at least 2 words off the paint chip in a poem and the goal was to be able to use all three but I understood that there were silly words on there that could not fit with themes they chose, this is where I gave the flexibility for them to choose their own chips and if they wanted to use one word from a paint chip and two from another I allowed that as well. The outcomes were amazing and creative and this is an activity I will bring into my future practicums and classroom.
The process leading to the activity is messy and time consuming….
..But the outcome is beautiful and engaging for the learners.