Through the Eyes of a Student

I am half way through my 10 week practicum and taking a moment to reflect on teaching. I recently realized that before the practicum started I was thinking about my unit and lesson plans through the eyes of teaching and a teacher. I have begun to understand that my thinking has shifted and I am more and more seeing my lessons through the eyes of a student. When I began to plan I had not been with my students for an extended period of time. I had begun to get to know them as students and people but I didn’t really know them that well. I planned all these lessons and units for people that I was trying to visualize. Now as I teach them daily I have gotten to know them on a deeper, more personal level.

I am constantly learning new things about them as learners and as I result I am slowly getting better at teaching this group of learners. My class is no longer a semi-abstract group of students. Every day we learn and grow together and I make changes to our day and our lessons based on their needs and interests. There are days when things don’t go well or a lesson flops but I always know that the next day is a fresh start and we can try it again tomorrow.

There are also days when things go well. I have had many of those moments when I can clearly see, hear, and even feel that students are engaged in their learning. Science has been a great opportunity to try many different things with my students including incorporating technology. My students have researched, experimented, discussed and thought about, and learned about landforms, erosion, and biomes. We have gotten dirty outside doing erosion experiments. This was one of my favourite moments for three reasons:

1. One of the experiments did not go as planned and we had a 30 minute discussion afterwards about how the erosion was supposed to work and what we could learn from this experience.
2. Students were able to clearly describe three types of erosion using drawings and words the following day.
3. During student led-conferences students were excited to introduce me as the teacher with whom they did science experiments. They then demoed land erosion at the back of the classroom for their parents.

Learning about biomes has provided many great “learnable” moments. Students had the opportunity to teach their peers about different biomes of the world. As a teacher I learned two important lessons:

1. That students often need to be provided with detailed steps for various skills such as researching.
2. Once they have those skills, they are able to soar far beyond my initial expectations.

I was blown away by the presentations that students created. They had truly pushed themselves to learn about their biomes and to teach others in an interesting way. I was pleased to share this assignment with parents and students via Fresh Grade and to leave a few comments for students to reflect on. This gave me an insight into the value of a tool like Fresh Grade.

Students continue to learn about biomes in science this time with a focus on protecting BC’s biomes. I look forward to continuing to learn and grow through the eyes of my students.