PROFESSIONALISM
A goal for my first practicum was to work together alongside my AT to deliver lessons that are student-centered. I demonstrated this with my AT by establishing and maintaining communication throughout the practicum block. I also regularly took initiative by asking if there is anything I can help out with, marking students’ assessments, and taking on challenges such as actively participating in staff meetings and trying out new technology. During my observation days, when my AT was teaching, I was not a passive observer, but instead, I raised my hand to add important points which I think adds to the students’ understandings, since I have a background in financial literacy which is the topic of the course. I also actively explored resources, and checked hyperlinks to make sure students had access to the links which can be frustrating to find in an online classroom. Furthermore, I expanded my teaching duration by asking to teach a part of unit two on compound interest since this was something I was very familiar with and have demonstration activities with. Finally, I regularly ask for feedback from my AT, my FA, and the vice principal as I know this is my first practicum and I have a lot I can improve upon. My biggest takeaway from this practicum is how much collaboration teaching can actually involve. I found that I highly enjoyed co-teaching with my AT and that the students enjoyed this too. My AT used resources provided by the Ministry of Education, her colleagues, and external sources and also urged me to build on top of her notes and lessons. This way, I can use her work as a foundation but also, I can personalize it to make it my own. When teachers find a great activity, they are urged to share with the department so that everyone can take part in that collective joy and bring it to their own classrooms because after all, we all share in the common goal of helping our students to become better versions of themselves. DIVERSITY AND EQUITY A goal for my first practicum was to introduce different ways of learning and unique examples to cater to a wider range of students. Some strategies I used to accomplish this goal included incorporating elements of Indigenous teachings into my lessons, offering different media of expression for assessments, and catering to different VARK learning profiles. My lessons demonstrated respect for Indigenous education as I have created several different versions of a customized land acknowledgement and asked different students to read it out loud to the class each day. I also highlighted important Indigenous figures on International Women’s Day, taught about tax exemption amongst the Indigenous peoples during the tax lesson, and introduced the Mazacoin (a cryptocurrency used by the Indigenous peoples of the USA) when teaching about currency conversion. In addition, adding onto my AT’s ideas for unit evaluations, When it came time for assessments, I offered students an option to meet individually in breakout rooms to verbally discuss answers as an alternative to written responses. Students also had the option of hand writing their work and uploading their work separate from their assessment. Carrying on from the adapted practicum, I also enjoyed including fitness mental math breaks that urge students to do an exercise which aligned with the correct answer (for example, 5 side stretches per side if the answer was 8). In an online environment, and particularly when we are stuck inside our houses for the majority of the day, it is important to offer stretch breaks scheduled throughout the lesson. My lessons also demonstrated other VARK considerations by offering a variety of activities to solidify understandings. These included online math games (such as making change), group building activities such as a virtual escape room through an interactive classroom on gather.town, and personalized asynchronous work which incorporated students’ interests into questions and scaffolded in terms of difficulty levels. One key takeaway I learned from this practicum is the importance of choice being offered to students. Currently, during the pandemic, students may feel as though they lack control over many events in their daily lives, and thus is it important to provide opportunities where students can take control of their own learning. I tried to facilitate this by asking them which activity they would like to engage in the following day, incorporating elements of student interest so students do not feel as though they are “forced” to come to class and attend uninteresting lessons, and offering different ways students can demonstrate their learning. I also asked for feedback from the students on two occasions so I can incorporate more of what they would like to see in their own learning. I hope I can continue to offer my students choices so they can take control of their own learning and become accountable adults in the future. INVOLVEMENT IN SCHOOL / COMMUNITY LIFE A goal for my first practicum was to recreate the physical school environment for the students as much as I can. My lessons demonstrated this by incorporating gather.town in as many different ways as I can. For example, through the use of collaborative whiteboards to replicate group work in groups in which students are free to move around and join different groups (a feature not possible with breakout rooms), through the use of “computer labs,” scavenger hunts, and finally an escape room theme as a unit review in which students can move through different areas of the room trying to solve puzzles. In addition, I also create Kahoot quizzes based on school events that the students are urged to take part in. For example, I created Kahoot quizzes on Pink Day as well as International Women’s Day in an effort to explain the purpose behind these events and not just some day in passing. By incorporating highlighted days into my daily lessons, it provides me a way to engage with the students in their school community, even if they are mostly in their homes. One of my biggest learnings from this practicum is the potential for lack of engagement with the school community when we are learning remotely. When we disconnected from our school environment, we may be less inclined to learn or care about what we are learning. Since humans are social beings, it is important to celebrate and acknowledge the events happening around us to harmonize understanding in the classrooms. In the future, regardless of virtual or physical classrooms, I know I will continue incorporating the school environment into my daily teachings to promote a holistic education for my students. UNDERSTANDING CURRICULUM AND THE LEARNER A goal for my first practicum was to engage learners. Since all students have their cameras turned off, and some only answer through the chat box, it can be difficult to build relationships amongst peers and create a trusting environment, where students can feel safe to take risks and speak out loud. In order to mitigate this, I included a cooperative activity for the students at the beginning of every class; something fun and engaging so students feel welcomed and tuned into their classrooms at the very start of class. I also wanted the students to have something to take away from by the end of their quadmester, so I created a digital recipe book and encouraged students to add to it throughout the quadmester as many of the students enjoy food and cooking. My lessons also demonstrate understanding of the learner as I regularly include examples with students’ names and their interests gathered through their introduction powerpoint at the beginning of the quadmester and throughout the weeks I have been observing them. I find this helps students engage with the current material as they often surprise themselves at where they can take with the question and how much they already know just by actively engaging with the information presented. Grouping students and creating a problem based on their interests is something I found to be a great way to encourage discussion and group work. I often encouraged those who may be stronger in the course to go into their own breakout room and create problems for each other, work together to figure out a solution to a concept I haven’t taught yet, or find an activity to do with the class the next day. This way, I can work through problems with the rest of the class who may need that extra attention while still keeping the other students engaged and challenged in their own ways. In addition, I also took great lengths to understand each students’ learning needs, through reading their IEPs and engaging with them both individually and as a group, I know when to ask certain students to participate to refocus their center of attention and when to check for understanding. I can also anticipate how to begin asking the question and guide each student through a different thinking process; one that aligns more so with their thinking. For example, with proportions, knowing which students are more visual learners helps as I can model proportions with images; which students prefer numbers as I can guide them through cross multiplication; or which students need auditory cues, as I can walk them through the problem like a conversation. I highly enjoyed guiding students through their own thought processes and building on top of what they already know. As a teacher, I think although it can be important to show the students’ how I would approach a question, I think it is even more important for the students to develop their own way of tackling the question and integrate what they are currently learning with what they already know. This way, students can remember the concepts taught well beyond the school environment. It is the reciprocal relationship of teaching and learning that helps students succeed as well as allowing me to learn and grow as an educator. One of my biggest takeaways from this practicum is just how personalized learning should be. Although two students may have similar IEPs and accommodations, their learning preferences may be very different and it takes that extra time to get to know a student on an individual basis to really understand how they might think. For example, two students may prefer learning through visuals; however, one might prefer modelling with images of the objects in the question, whereas another might prefer a number line strategy where the numerical differences between numbers can be visually expressed. Creating a classroom full of different learning styles can be difficult to accommodate, and thus it is important to let students guide their own learning as much as they can. This way, we, as teachers can see how they learn, and students can find their own methodology behind every problem. ASSESSMENT, PLANNING AND INSTRUCTION A goal for my first practicum was to provide different options and varieties for the assessments (AfL, AaL, AoL). I have been updating my digital portfolio (from adapted practicum) of the assessments I created and it displays evidence of my creativity and thoughtful consideration of different learners. For example, quizzes are deliberately kept short so to keep the students focused and minimize typing of equations which may be awkward and frustrating to many students. Aside from offering different media expressions for unit evaluations, I also included choice on which items students would like to buy so they can see that learning is practical and relevant to the individual student. This way, students who want that extra challenge can by selecting more items to buy or an item which may be in a foreign currency and those who are comfortable with minimal challenge, can opt to choose one item to buy. In addition, whereas when I first began teaching the class, I kept group work to a minimum until the students got comfortable with each other and would speak to each other in a group, near the end I tried to include group work whenever I can. These include Jamboard AaL activities such as currency conversions between galleons (Harry Potter currency) to CAD, shopping Jeopardy, and the class escape room in gather.town. My AT and I would also regularly pull students aside to speak with individually in breakout rooms as many find that is helpful when they want clarification. Breakout rooms in a virtual environment allow for a private space, where no other student can overhear the private conversation. Allowing these options increases the trust between the students and teachers and allows them more chances to fully participate and demonstrate their understanding through a variety of assessments such as class participation, group work, and on unit evaluations. My biggest learning from this practicum is the controversy of standardized testing demonstrated to me first hand. When students have their cameras off and muted, it is difficult to gauge understanding, and whether the students are stuck and need help with clarification. Sometimes, a student may not respond to me when I call on them in class, not because they are not there but because they are nervous to ask for help amongst others who indicated that they have already finished their tests. Providing alternate activities for those students who finish faster but not wanting to go on with the next lesson may also be difficult as I would like the class to be learning together. I also found with the group of students that although some would do very poorly when asked to write the answers to a test, the same students do so much better when asked to answer verbally. It is that fine balance between working to the students’ strengths but also pushing them to improve on their weaknesses that standardized testing does not allow for. Authentic assessments, ones where the assessments are relevant to the students’ futures and everyday decisions as well as provides individual choice make for the best when assessing for levels of understanding. In the future, with my own class, I will find alternatives to standardized testing, particularly in a subject like mathematics where the concepts learned are not typically applied in a written manner. Authentic assessment is something I will work on in my next two practicums with the knowledge I gain from the course I will take in the summer time. CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT A goal for my first practicum was to recreate a “noisy classroom” in a virtual setting. Building relationships in an online environment, where faces are not visible and voices are not heard can be very challenging even for adults. Although I did not anticipate having to micromanage the class and ask them to focus on the lesson, I’m glad that the students were able to talk freely amongst themselves near the end of my practicum, so much so that I had to remind a student to use appropriate language in the classroom. I found that building on students’ interests, going on tangents, and following the student’s train of thought, are great ways to build relationships because often students found familiarity between their peers who enjoy and think similarly. We had one student who was a professional singer, and thus my AT allowed him to play his songs, provided they were appropriate, for the class every day. This got many students engaged and conversations started to form. Students who engaged with and participated frequently found that they understand the material more, and also reported greater satisfaction with the class that day. I also appreciated letting the students get off topic and just socialize with their peers as it may be the only socialization time they partake in during a day. These students also love Kahoot immensely so I tend to save one near the end of class as a reward for their hard work and participation during the class. Kahoot also tends to get students excited and competitive, thus urging them to do better. I also think it is a great point to end on at the end of a lesson, sort of to mimic when the bell rings to signal the end of class and students start to mingle with each other to get to the next class. One of my biggest takeaways from this practicum was the difficulty in addressing wait times in an online environment. When I can see my students, I can tell when they are thinking and just need an extra second or two and tend to be more patient. However, in an online environment, it is difficult to judge wait times, as I am not sure if students are typing answers in the chat box, thinking, or just confused as to what I am asking. I tend to interrupt students when they are not finished their thoughts to which I apologize and then urge them to finish. However, this breaks their train of thought and may lead to questions never being asked. I think I will get better at gauging online wait times as I progress in my teaching career as I will know what to watch out for and use my professional judgment to make that decision. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS I really appreciated how this practicum got me out of my comfort zone by allowing me to teach grade 11 workplace math; a course with students I have never worked with before. I believe there can be many misconceptions when one has never worked with these students before and I am grateful that I got to experience this early on in my career. It allows me to better understand students and overcome that implicit bias associated with IEPs and learning disabilities that I never realized I had. All students can benefit from teaching strategies I developed during this practicum and all students have the potential to achieve their very best; it just takes a teacher to prepare them with the necessary resources for them to succeed. The goal for all students is to be successful in their own definitions, and it starts with that connection I have with each student. If respect and trust is formed, students are more willing to engage with the material and make the effort to absorb what I am teaching. If this goal is the same for every student, then I should teach with the same mindset in all classrooms and adapt the lessons to suit the needs of the class, regardless of what class and course I am teaching.
0 Comments
Curriculum expectations are not the be all and end all
I love teaching because I love learning. It never amazes me what I can learn about myself each time I take on a new challenge.
Some strengths I found were: Making lessons in advance and incorporating elements of differentiated instruction
Engaging students
Online learning has snow days to accommodate for all students who may be helping out at home during a storm. Lesson plans do not have to be too detailed
Learning should be student centered and it is no different in an essential's classroom. Letting students investigate the formula or concepts by themselves with a bit of scaffolding is a great way for students to make sense of the new material on their own terms. Below are some examples of this. Investigation with TVM solver and compound interest, where students try to see if they come up with a way to investigate compound interest on their own. There were two stronger students in the class, in which case I allowed them to have their own breakout room and try a similar activity but in addition to understanding compound interest, they can develop a formula on their own. Working with essential students, relationships are everything. In addition to building relationships between teacher and student, it is important to allow chances for student interaction with each other so students can learn from like-minded peers. Below are a few samples of the activities I designed to create purposeful learning and group investigation. Personalized "Which is the better buy?" activity where each student has a unique problem based on their interests. The class works alongside them as the student figures it out based on their own trains of thought. This encourages differentiated instruction and shows students the practicality of their learning, while also demonstrating the infinite number of ways to solve a problem. Simple and compound interest game whereby students drag counters to the correct answer on the Jamboard. This encourages cooperation if working together with a team or competition which the students enjoy. Rounding BINGO Small group investigation whereby each student has a specific role assigned (runner, scribe, presenter) to promote group work and equity. Ideas were chosen from student interests as this engages them in the learning and share ideas amongst like minded peers. Another example on tax and discount can be found here. Extra group investigation for currency conversion in case time permitted. This activity promoted digital literacy skills as students need to pick out information from the online source they are reading from. Thinking Classroom by Peter Liljedahl, where students are provided with sequential challenges that build on their skill level so they are continuously provided the correct amount of challenge and reward. Compound interest solver. Students annotate sticky notes and plug numbers into TVM solver. Employs elements of Thinking Classroom as well. Galleons (Harry Potter currency), Poké coins (Pokémon currency), and Bitcoin conversion currency conversion group activity. I would love to create a noisy classroom for the students as it takes that much longer for students to get to know one another each day in an online classroom. For this, I have created: gather.town virtual classroom complete with 2 online bookshelves, piano/drums/woodwind instruments, computer monitors, games rooms, white boards, private lounge areas, and projectors. Pancakes vs. Waffles, a "would you rather eliminate ___" kind of game where students are encouraged to share their thoughts. One line art, a mindfulness activity that draws upon the interest of drawing from many of the students. A scavenger hunt which encourages students to show their items on camera and get students to move around their rooms. Madlibs Unlearn - posters than inspire critical thinking Due to the difficulties of working online, assessments should be in the form of assignments, as opposed to tests and short quizzes are preferable to lengthy practice sheets to gauge understanding. Below, I have provided a sample of my work for MEL3E. Visual progress chart for students to see where their level of understanding is (adapted from IS143 Class of 2022 cohort). Purchasing power unit evaluation. Students get to go shopping and apply what they learned in the unit. Quizzes on a couple of topics we covered each time. Kahoot quizzes Escape room on gather.town complete with all of unit 3 concepts. Escape room can be found here and the accompanying handout here. Jeopardy review on purchasing power. Entry ticket on content learned the previous day. left I've attended many workshops that provides us with many tech-savy resources for us to use in the classroom, for example Edulastic's embedded questions into the videos, and gather.town which is an interactive classroom that I can create which simulates classroom interactions. As much as I am very interested and excited to create these new resources and classroom style, I don't want to take away from my AT's teaching style and introduce something new for these students who may have difficulties navigating the online learning environment. How I can introduce new and exciting ways to engage without it being too drastically different than what they are used to is the challenge.
In addition, the pre-watch videos with questions embedded are largely meant to be viewed in an asynchronous format. I think this is challenging to do for my class as my AT wants to limit the amount of asynchronous work that they do since they are online for most of the day. Thus, this limits the amount of content and independent work I can assign the students which means it's the added challenge of fitting all the things I want to teach them (learning skills, content, and communication skills amongst others) within a 2 or 3 hour block. However, although I don't think it is feasible to recreate the classroom for them entirely especially since I am only going to be full on teaching them for ~2 weeks, I can use these resources in a different creative way. For example, instead of using Edulastic's videos and questions as a pre-class asynchronous task, I can play a video in class on NearPod, then where there are questions to be asked during the video, I can stop the video, and ask the students to answer the questions on their own devices. I am thankful that NearPod has that live teaching option so I can play the video on my screen and the question pops up on their screen. In addition, I think instead of sending my students on a 20 minute break, I can introduce structured breaks in between the hours such as a Kahoot emoji quiz with music titles (since they all seem to enjoy music), and stretch breaks integrated with math content (eg. if the answer is A, then stand up and sit down 5 times). Additionally, I know that students eventually might need a washroom and/or snack break and thus need to be away from their cameras. For this, I will set up Classroom screen on my monitor projecting to the class the countdown so they will know how long they have in their break instead of keeping track of it themselves. This way, I can also hold my students accountable and everyone will be on the same page when we come back after the break. I'm about to begin my first ever "real" practicum with students. I'm very excited it's grade 11 Workplace Math as although I've been tutoring mathematics for 8 years, it mainly has been the advanced functions, and IB streams and working with a different group of students. Thus, I am appreciative of the diverse practicum experience I am able to experience this time around and will expand my repertoire of online teaching resources as I embark on this experience.
I've had 3 observation days until today and the biggest surprise is the lack of relationship building I see in the class. Not only do students not have their cameras on, but they are from all different home schools and they are working from the Virtual Secondary School (VSS) platforms. As such, although my associated teacher (AT) and I have been with these students for 3 classes already (technically 6 in a regular school semester due to the condensed quadmestered system), we've focused a lot on community building and taking the time to meet each student's needs. Many of the students have IEPs and it's frustrating that we are not being provided them yet as it makes it difficult to plan for accommodations and individual help sessions with the class of 16 (although only 10 show up on a regular basis). From what I have observed thus far, I really want to increase participation in the classroom and sometimes, the students log in to Brightspace and then leave because they do not respond when called upon or participate in breakout rooms. I can see my AT trying really hard to incorporate videos and examples that pertain to their interests. I only wish I can get to know them that much more so I can utilize it to my advantage when creating lessons. I love how my AT got everyone to create a "Oh Hey! It's Me" presentation on 10 traits that we should know about each student just to break down the walls between us and share some interests. One student just signed a contract with a recording studio and even played one of his songs for us during the break. I found that an incredible bonding experience as music is a common interest of many in the group and these students are so very talented. I look forward to a whole month with them, and hope I can convey the importance of essential math skills that the students would need in the real world. I hope to apply some of my financial literacy education here as well. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |