Well, here we go again with another review of what went down in 316 / 310 class.  Hang on to your wigs and keys as this one might move pretty quickly!

EDUC 315 Mid-Point Check In

At the half-way point of the Tuesdays Practicum, Shep and I asked you to consider your highs & lows to this point and to ask any questions that come to mind.

Also, we reviewed some expectations relating to this initial practicum experience, namely:

• Please email us a plan for the lesson you’re teaching to us and your SA as close to a week ahead of time as possible.  Shep and I will look it over and offer some feedback.  We will not observe your lesson, mind you.  Teaching this class will likely be stressful enough without your FA lurking around in the back of the room taking notes!
• Please ask your SA to observe the lesson and to give you written feedback.
• The planning cycle involves:
  • Planning
  • Teaching
  • Reflecting
• Please email us a copy of your post-lesson reflection.  Your SA might want one as well but you will be debriefing your lesson with him or her in person so giving a copy of your reflection to them may be redundant.  Here’s a format you can use for your reflection (it’s taken directly from the Microteaching task):

Microteaching Assessment

We handed out the rubric we’re using to assess the Microteaching task.  The rubric, developed by Barrie Bennett, is built around the Lesson Design components we worked with in earlier classes.  Those components make up the lesson plan structure we’re suggesting you use to plan your lessons.  The rubric might also serve as a useful tool for analyzing your lessons on the 2-week and 13-week practica.

There are many Microteaching lessons on YouTube.  Here’s a part of one.  For fun, you can use your rubric and see how these beginning teachers stack up (C’mon, they posted their lesson on the Interweb for all to see!):

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9zgao_Gw7o&feature=fvsr[/youtube]

What Really Matters in Learning? (Content) Article Debrief

To process this article, we adapted the Card Stack and Shuffle strategy.  Each person was asked to highlight the most compelling phrase, sentence or few lines in their response to the article.   Then, the pieces were collected, shuffled and handed out randomly to class members.  Each class member was to read the highlighted section and respond to it in writing.  Then, each person was to find a partner and discuss their highlighted section and their reaction to it.  This is a form of pre-conversation preparation that facilitates think time and engagement with the ideas in a text.  We ran out of time before we could get an in-depth conversation going but we’ll pick up the threads next class as we look in detail at UBD’s stage 1 – Desired Results.

‘Til then,

– Lawrence