Monthly Archives: March 2014

Teaching Practicum Week 6

In several of my classes, writing my lesson plans, I began to forget about questioning. Perhaps I was getting too comfortable with questioning techniques – maybe I felt that I could come up most of my central questions on the daily class topics on the spot. Possibly, my lessons were more ‘work time’ oriented and I lost focus on the questioning that supports introducing concepts. In any case, this week was a good time to continue implementing preplanned questioning in my lessons as I was feeling pretty sick and listless. The preplanning was integral to allowing the class to run more smoothly while my mind was running a little more slowly.

Being sick this week also allowed me to think more about using more than just my voice to establish order in the classroom. My throat was feeling awful, and every time I had to give instructions, I was reminded of how using other tools like lights, gestures, noise-making devices, etc., would be awesome.

Goals for coming back after the March Break include testing out some of those tools in classroom management, reworking my rubrics and criteria lists so that they are all in order for upcoming assignments, and of course, catching up on lesson planning (and sleep).

Teaching Practicum Week 5

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The midpoint meeting this week allowed me to hear from all angles the areas in which I should be focusing. I heard and processed that I should be paying close attention to making my expectations clearer to students. That is to say, I have specific rubrics and marking criteria for the visual and media arts projects, so I should be making those more accessible to students. Although a personal concern of mine is that students typically disregard printed rubrics and project criteria checklists, I would like to find some way to make those assessment tools and expectations clear to students without necessarily resorting to printing off many paper copies that will inevitably end up on the floor.

My ideas for creating this clarity and accountability in grading involves going through the rubrics and criteria on the overhead projector before starting a new project, and then checking in throughout the project to remind students of those expectations in the same manner. When delivering grades to students formatively and in a summative way, my aim is to meet with students personally to explain why they are receiving the marks that they see. The problem with this plan so far has been that there is no time within classes to meet one on one. I realize only now that these grading meetings need to be explicitly built into my lesson plans or else they will not happen. I would like to prioritize making precise times for assessment part of my lesson plans.

Also discussed during my midpoint meeting was the issue of firmness with my students. I am struggling to transform the relaxed atmosphere that has already been established within some classrooms into a more firm one without losing rapport with students. I know that this is possible, and much of it has to do with language use (example: “you will do this” and not “can you do this for me?”).

Teaching Practicum Week 4

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This week I learned that having a period split into a variety of activities helps students to focus. As we flow from one activity to another, students have less of a chance to take out their cellphones and text, or attempt to do last night’s math homework. The challenge is to relate the many different activities back to the main theme or concept of the class. For example, in a Visual Arts classroom, group ice-breaker activities, art history/context presentations, drawing warm-ups and drawing games are all somewhat amenable to art content. The students, I think, feel that their time is being used appropriately in each task, and each task ameliorates their visual skills.

Students in my Media Arts class seemed a little more resistant to having so many different components to each class. Splitting the class into presentation, discussion, lesson and then work period helped to manage student distractions like computer games and cellphone use, however, the students became agitated by the thought of not having the majority of the class to film their projects. Instead, I tried to see what would happen if the project work time in each class was reduced. Perhaps this will drive the students to regard the work time as more ‘precious’. I will have to observe more how this method will work.

In the upcoming week I would like to maintain a high level of energy and activities in my classes. I will be picking up two more classes, and I foresee that it will be a struggle to maintain energy as workload ramps up. I want to get enough sleep, which will require going to bed at 8:30 pm, and maintain a healthy diet. It can be difficult to get groceries with this kind of schedule.

In terms of classroom management, I would like to work on my questioning. Only certain students in each class tend to answer questions. I would like to reach out to students who are more quiet or scared to speak out in front of the class. This might be an occasion to implement the think-pair-share method.

Mask Project that students create with another teacher — what a beauty to show off!