Rationale #1: Letter Home
One February 10, 2009, I returned back to the same grade three classroom I completed my short practicum in. As a way to connect and inform the parents/guardians on my return, I wrote a short letter home explaining my future responsibilities in the classroom. This artifact is filed under standard 4 because it shows my involvement and support of keeping parents informed in their children’s’ education. In the letter, I explained how long I would be their son or daughter's teacher and the goals I hope to accomplish while being there. This letter home was more for me to show my dedication and desire to have a positive and open relationship with the parents/guardians of the students to help ensure the success for their child. I provided the parents/guardians with multiple contact information in which they can reach me at any time with questions or concerns. I feel that communication between the classroom teacher and parents are a crucial factor in helping a child to succeed. I want to work closely with my students' parents and provide them with the knowledge of how their child is doing in the classroom. I want to provide all my students with the opportunity of success and having parents involved in their child's learning can only enhance that for them.
Writing this letter, has helped me gain insight on how to address and inform parents with situations occurring in the classroom. It has also helped me see the importance of providing that communication for an open relationship. Once I sent the letter home, more parents would come into the classroom and talk to me about the child's learning. They started to respect me more as their child's classroom teacher and gave me the opportunity to be involved in their child's recommendations for learning at home.
Rationale 2: Bringing Community Members into the Classroom
Presenter: Brent Bailey from UFV- Agricultural Department
Date: April 14, 2009
Location: Grade 3 at Little Mountain Elementary
On April 14, 2009 I organized for a community member to come to the classroom. This artifact is filed under standard 4 because it showed my support and how important I believe keeping stude
nts connected to members in their community is. This community member is one who is highly involved with the care and growth of plants. He works at the University of the Fraser Valley and his name is Brent Bailey. I invited Mr. Bailey to come and talk to the students about the various things he does to help plants. This was very applicable and realistic for the students to see because of the current plant unit that was being studied at the time. For the presentation, he talked about the various jobs he does in the greenhouse, how to protect plants, what plants do for the environment and the most exciting part of all, was the discussion of bugs. The students loved his presentation and it helped them connect to the unit more.I think bringing important community individuals, like Brent Bailey, into the schools is key to getting the students to connect to the outer world beyond the classroom. Many of them were thinking about how they could have his job. It became more real for them and he made the presentation so interactive that I think they forgot they were learning. In my future classrooms, I plan on bringing various community members in to help make the connections to life outside of school more realistic and relevant for the students.