Having a positive impact on student’s lives

Danika Farion, who teaches a Grade 1 and 2 split class at Schuler School, is in her seventh year of teaching, and chose this career path because she wanted to have an impact on people’s lives. “I feel like teaching really does that,” said Farion. “You can see how the kids develop and how they grow. It’s the most magical thing when they come to me being unsure about letter sounds and, because I get them for two years, the growth I get to see from letter sounds to reading word passages is amazing. The look they get in their eyes when they get it and watching them learn is rewarding.”

Reading time is her students' favourite, when they get to choose two books based on their reading level and then get to ‘shop’ for two books based on their interests. Farion avoids using workbooks for the most part and finds using the whole classroom or different parts of the school, which allow her students to move around while learning, works best. As it is the beginning of the year, she is still assessing where each student is at, what each of the Grade 1 students know and how much the Grade 2 students have retained over the summer.

“I want to ensure when we begin our learning activities that I’m meeting each of them where they are at because if they don’t have the numbers 1 to 20 mastered, I’m not going to move them onward to 50. It ends up being many different programs in here, I could probably have five or six different levels going on in literacy and numeracy. That is what works best for them, where each can do things, they can be successful at and have their own growth. Everybody’s growth looks different,” explained Farion.

When Farion first started at Schuler School straight out of university, she taught several grades and various subjects before moving into the Grade 1 and 2 classroom a few years ago. “I love literacy and teaching students how to read. I’ve done lots of research and professional development in literacy. It’s my favourite thing to teach. Coming out of university, I didn’t think I wanted to teach junior high, and I ended up loving it. Then I was in Grade 5 and 6 along with 3 and 4 and I liked that also,” stated Farion. “This position opened, and I was already getting passionate about literacy with the Grade 5 and 6 students because I was seeing a large gap, and I was curious as to why. That’s what steered me towards the science of reading and creating the sound wall in my classroom along with explicit phonics instruction.”

A new Grade 1 student will be starting in Farion’s class next week and then she will have ten in Grade 1 and seven in Grade 2. Her classroom has tables that sit three students each and she tries to have at least one Grade 2 at each table where they can act in a leadership role.

“We don’t do lots of stuff at the desks, we do stuff all around the room. Tomorrow, we are doing orthographic mapping of our words,” said Farion.

For this exercise, Farion will create different ‘ponds’ around the room with picture cards upside down. Each student will ‘fish’ for words in their designated pond, using the word on the card to map out its sounds, build the word, write it and then use the word in a sentence. Once done, the student brings the word back to its pond and gets to fish for another one.  

“The fishing works well and I use it for reading comprehension as well where there are sentences that have all the graphemes they are learning. They read the sentence, write it, and draw a diagram to show the sentence. Tomorrow for numeracy, I have number cards from 1-50 and another set of 1-100 and we’ll go to the gym. Each student gets their own set, and they lay them out for number recognition. They love going to the gym and it's fun for them. Everything I do is interactive by using white boards or using manipulatives, so I can see where each student is at. I take pictures that go in their portfolios to show their progress,” said Farion.  

Within each portfolio, the students write ‘I can’ statements for their literacy and numeracy curriculum along with photos from field trips and other activities. Farion binds the collection together for each student to take home at the end of the year. “It makes it as easy as possible. It’s nice for report cards as it shows exactly where they are at and for the parents to look at,” explained Farion.

The sound wall in Farion’s classroom is her own creation because there was nothing available she felt would work. “It helps teach all the graphemes. The letters that make the sounds are really important, which is a big change that’s happened in reading instruction,” said Farion. On the wall are all the sounds the students learn, and they can refer to it whenever they are reading, spelling or writing. “It really helps them to remember sounds and to reference them when learning new sounds. It’s a game changer for the students, not only learning this way but also being able to access the wall and make sense while they are progressing” concluded Farion.

By Samantha Johnson, Prairie Rose Public Schools Content Writer