Do you know that feeling of finding your place in life? The 490 practicum has helped me find my place in a classroom. From the very first day to the last, and every day in between, they have supported and solidified that teaching is exactly what I want to do with my life. I sympathize with the people that are not in love with their jobs, because teaching does not feel like a job to me. Spending time in a classroom bring me comfort and joy, and while every day is not perfectly full of sunshine and rainbows, those days that are, make the harder days more manageable.
490 practicum allowed for me to experience what teaching a full unit was like for multiple subjects. Planning for full units in math and science taught me when I should be assessing students to know when it was time to move on to the next lesson, and if we needed more time. Teaching on the fly is one of the strengths that I used, especially during math lessons while teaching fractions. While I always had certain lessons planned for each day of the week to complete our fractions unit on time, this class continuously surprised me on how well they grasped and understood each math lesson, that I was continuously having to come up with harder extensions than I had originally planned for. This was something that even my Coaching teacher pointed out, as we always talked about how the lesson would go before hand, and then I would have to think of something else in the middle of the lesson to add and even they noticed how certain math comparisons, or use of manipulatives were not in the original lesson plan, but support our learning. Planning and adding additional extensions, or even removing some in the middle of a lesson will be something that I think I will come across often in teaching as students always tend to surprise me on their quick learning abilities, and being quick to change things on the fly is something I will use to my advantage!
490 practicum has shown me that a stretch of mine is finding that fine line of when an assessment should be done, and the best way for students to show their learning. This is something that I want to continue to work on as I did rely on my Coaching teacher to help assess when students had done enough work on certain sections of a unit and when to move on. Especially when there is a range of learners, when is the appropriate time to say, yes we have done enough work if you are still not understanding this I will provide extra support in another way, but it is time to move on to the next lesson. Also, I believe that practice and multi-lessons or repeating help all learners but trying to make sure that the students that grasped concepts quicker than others were not being held back in their learning when other learners needed more time to understand. I plan to keep scaffolding my lessons so that all students can continuously learn, make connections to know students that need extra time verse when it is actually time to move on as well as have extensions for my fast learners and simpler options for the ones who need more support, especially when it comes to assessment and having options on how to assess so it does not target only one type of learning demonstration.
One of my favourite memories from practicum was when I brought in Stanley the Skeleton for the human body bones lesson. This lesson was so hilariously fun not just for the students but for me. Stanley (aka the love of my life) taught students different done facts, and the importance of taking care of our muscles. Students then created their only mini Stanley’s and together we created Stanley’s own classroom of students. We also realized that Stanley, who is about 5ft tall, is roughly the size of most of the students in this classroom. Then one of my students jumped up and stood behind Stanley to give the example of how their skeleton would look in real life as she was the exact same height. It was hilarious and so amazing to see the students to engaged in learning the skeletal system (and enjoying the love of my life Stanley)!
Leave a Reply