Practicum Reflection for EDUC 452<\/p>\n
15 June 2017-06-14<\/p>\n
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My practicum was at John Oliver Secondary in Vancouver.\u00a0 I taught woodwork, ADST 8, automotive\/power technology, and STEM. \u00a0The ADST 8 class began in electronics and then moved on to woodwork.\u00a0 The STEM class is taught collaboratively by a tech. ed. teacher and a math\/science teacher (I was the tech. ed teacher).\u00a0 Students in the STEM class worked on projects that were connected in some way to the math\/science curriculum.\u00a0 During my 10 weeks of teaching, there were challenges and successes.\u00a0 I learned a lot, and I came out more competent and sure that I had chosen the right profession.<\/p>\n
My favourite moment from practicum was when I was teaching STEM on the last day before spring break.\u00a0 That class was \u201ccompetition day\u201d at the end of a unit where students built \u201csumo-bots\u201d.\u00a0 Sumo-bots are small (15cm x 15cm), rudimentary robots with wired controls that are designed to push other robots out of a competition area.\u00a0 The part that I was most proud of was that every student was able to get their sumo-bot to work so everyone was able to participate.\u00a0 Several students had been struggling and thought that they wouldn\u2019t be able to participate but with some extra time put in during lunches, they were successful.\u00a0 The most fun part was when several other classes came to be an audience.\u00a0 The classroom was packed with students, loud with cheering, and it was overall a fantastic experience that I will remember.<\/p>\n
One challenge was when, shortly into the practicum, several ELL students who were new to Canada were added to a woodwork 9 class that I was teaching.\u00a0 They had minimal English speaking or writing abilities.\u00a0 The first challenge was that they had to complete the shop safety tests before they could start using the tools.\u00a0 Their English was not strong enough to understand the safety handouts that my SA used.\u00a0 It took time but we were able to slowly go through each machine and complete the test successfully.\u00a0 Instead of writing safety tests for all the machines at the same time, I separated the tests so we began with the machines they needed to use to get started on their projects, then made our way through the shop until they were caught up, never writing more than one test in a class.\u00a0 This helped because instead of being overwhelmed with all off the new and unfamiliar terminology, it was broken up into manageable sections.\u00a0 All three of these students ended up being very successful in woodwork \u2013 they all earned A\u2019s for the term.<\/p>\n
My experience with the ELL students in woodwork showed an opportunity that tech. ed. teachers have, to give ELL students an opportunity to engage with school.\u00a0 In tech. ed. classes, students who struggle with English may be able to excel at hand-on work.\u00a0 This was the case with the students that I was teaching.\u00a0 All three were enthusiastic, motivated, and worked hard to get caught up.\u00a0 They became some of the strongest students, and were even able to become leaders in the shop by helping other students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Practicum Reflection for EDUC 452 15 June 2017-06-14 My practicum was at John Oliver Secondary in Vancouver.\u00a0 I taught woodwork, ADST 8, automotive\/power technology, and STEM. \u00a0The ADST 8 class began in electronics and then moved on to woodwork.\u00a0 The STEM class is taught collaboratively by a tech. ed. teacher and a math\/science teacher…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46012,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-138","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/fhawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/fhawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/fhawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/fhawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46012"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/fhawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/fhawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/fhawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/138\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/fhawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}