In my second practicum, my coaching teacher had a Big Buddy class that he cotaught with another teacher, however, I did not interact with the lessons during that practicum. In my final practicum, however it was my responsibility to coteach a Little Buddy/Big Buddy class. This was an amazing experience for me because I got to learn from another experienced teacher that wasn’t just my coaching teacher.

Together with this class, we would meet every Monday to do various activities and lessons. I used this time primarily to incorporate ADST lessons from the curriculum into my practice. This was of course done with the support and guidance from the other Buddy teacher. One of the things I found interesting was the difference between communication from a grade 1 class to a grade 6/7 class. We had decided to do the “It’s not a Box” lesson, based off of the children’s book. This is where students would bring in various boxes and bottlecaps, and other materials, and together both classes would make different creations that were “Not a Box”.

I found this activity very interesting because not only did the students all love doing it, but the various creations that the students made were so varied. The little buddies also got to keep the creations, and the big buddies were very enthusiastic about helping the little buddies make things that they were interested in. This was just one example of different ADST lessons that both classes participated in, and I used these relationships that the two classes had with each other to decide to make a plan to go on a field trip with both classes.