Well it is getting closer and closer to that time. I only have 3 days left in Kindergarten in the US before I fly across the ocean to teach in Year 5 and 6 (American 4th and 5th grade) in New Zealand. I spent a lot of time packing this weekend. I still have a lot of editing of what I packed and last minute additions, but still I'm feeling reasonably ready to go. All of the teachers at Cormier (my US placement) keep asking me about my trip and are very excited for me. They can't wait to hear all about it when I get back. I'd love to be able to give a little bit of a seminar/class to the staff about what I learned while I was there.
I've prepared a few lessons so that if I get put on the spot to teach anything, I won't get too stressed out trying to think of what to teach. Most of them are pretty general, but I really like them. I prepared quite a few icebreaker activities that I've had stored in the back of my mind after a summer as a camp counselor and a year as an FYE mentor. In addition to that, I've prepared a Thanksgiving unit, where I'm going to be focusing on being thankful during the holiday season. I also found two general friendship type lessons. One just being a book share where students form small groups to share their favorite books and then rotate so that they get to learn all about everyone's favorite book. I also have another one called Friendship Glyphs. That one is where they are drawing a picture of a person, but how they draw it depends on information about themselves. For example, if their birthday is in Jan they have red hair. Then you put them all up and students have to use the key to figure out whose picture is whose. I also prepared a math lesson about how long would it take to get here if I rode my bike, if I drove a car, if I took a train... Lastly, I came up with a cool goodbye unit where I show them all the places I traveled in New Zealand and then my students need to come up with a place where they would want to travel in the United States. And they do research and prepare a presentation on the attraction.
Well, I'm almost ready to go!
When I had a student teacher in primary school, he got the addresses of kids in his class and matched them up with kids in his class and we all got a penpal if we wanted one. I had a girl called Cory and we sent pictures and such to each other. It was fun.
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