Tara Templeman, B.Ed.

I have been spending some time thinking about my choice of teaching as a career during my internship thus far. Being in the classroom setting for seven weeks has made me certain that teaching is the career for me. I feel that in order to have a career in teaching, you certainly have to enjoy it and be passionate about it. This enjoyment and passion will lead to a successful and rewarding career. Below are some feelings that I have developed about teaching since being the classroom for seven weeks. I feel that teaching is going to be a very rewarding career for me. I have found it very rewarding to teach lessons to my class and to see that they are learning the concept I am teaching to them. While sometimes it is a challenge to Read More »

I feel that classroom management is crucial in order to be an effective teacher. During my internship thus far, I have been concerned about classroom management because I feel that in order to have an effective classroom you need to be a good classroom manager. Since one of the goals I have set for myself during my internship is to become a better classroom manager, I have been working hard to develop effective techniques to use with my class through observing my co-operating teacher and doing some research on my own. I have observed a lot of effective classroom management from my cooperating teacher. She does an excellent job of managing her classroom. I learn new things from her regarding classroom management on a daily Read More »

An effective lesson that I have taught to my kindergarten class is a math lesson introducing capacity. Below I will explain this lesson and explain three reasons why I consider it to be effective. To begin this lesson I referred back to our guessing jar that we have been using for estimation in math. In the guessing jar we would place as many objects as could fit (the same objects each time i.e. blocks). I explained to the students that this meant it was filled to capacity. After this, I defined capacity. I then held up another container to compare with the guessing jar. I asked the students which container they thought would hold more. After taking several predictions, I used rice to test which container would hold more. To Read More »

Students in today’s classroom possess a wide range of diverse learning needs that teachers must be prepared to address. There is a wide range of abilities at Virginia Park Elementary which is obvious in the kindergarten classroom that I am placed in. There are many needs to address and consider when planning lessons to meet the needs of all students in the classroom. Below I will describe the range of learning needs that are evident in my classroom through describing two students paying particular attention to their learning needs and styles. The majority of students in my classroom are very dependent, low-level learners who require a great deal of extra assistance. Some of these students have student assistants that Read More »

A lesson plan has many qualities that make it effective. In the paragraphs below I will describe an effective lesson plan taught by my co-operating teacher. I think this lesson is effective for many reasons and I will explain three of these reasons below. An effective lesson taught by my co-operating teacher was a lesson on estimation and graphing in math. She had a container that she called a guessing jar and inside the jar she put different objects and got the students to estimate how many they thought would fit inside the jar. She put in things like blocks, bottles of paint, puppets, and more. This lesson took place over the course of a week as she used different objects in the guessing jar each day. She made a table to show Read More »