Monthly Archives: February 2016

Practicum week 4 thoughts

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This week it was an interesting teaching week.  There were a few lessons where I thought they were mediocre, but other teachers told me I actually did a good job.  What seemed to be good about my lessons weren’t necessarily what I perceived the students were getting out of my lesson, but more so how I handled individual situations as a teacher and trying new things in my lessons.  It was encouraging that veteran teachers were asking me where I was getting some of my resources and collaborating ideas with me.  One example was when my PE 10 class did their fitness unit this week.  I printed out some pre-made superhero inspired workout routines that I found online and I had two different teachers ask me where I got the routines from.

The UBC courses taught us to listen to our SAs advice and take their ideas, but it was interesting to see that a lot of the teachers look to us student teachers for new/fresh ideas, resources, and an inside on what new teacher candidates are learning that’s different or the same as when they went through the program.

Practicum week 3 thoughts

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This week I wanted to address a situation that is related to my inquiry.  As stated two weeks ago I planned to test my inquiry question out on my PE 10 class.  What I thought worked well was allowing students to create their own activities/drills/games in my volleyball unit.  However, there seems to be reluctance from the students to want to try the TGFU model of teaching.  The TGFU model that I tried implementing was creating mini games for students to learn game concepts.  I am finding it difficult to implement my inquiry because it is about motivation and the TGFU seems to be demotivating a very motivated group of students.  I plan to try a different approach to my upcoming unit of basketball in two weeks.  What I plan to do is to have the students to get into teaching groups and to teach each other the skills and rules necessary to play the game.  I will shorten each unit to one week and each day will look as follows:

Monday – explanation of expectations, dividing class into 6 groups, assigning topics to each group, work in class to create 20 minute lessons

Tuesday – groups 1 and 2 teach (total of 40 minutes teaching time), last 20ish minutes of class is scrimmage time

Wednesday – groups 3 and 4 teach (total of 40 minutes teaching time), last 20ish minutes of class is scrimmage time

Thursday – groups 5 and 6 teach (total of 40 minutes teaching time), last 20ish minutes of class is scrimmage time

Friday – whole class game play

Instead of being evaluated on how they do their skills, I will mark them on their understanding of the skills by what they teach to the class.

I think that the UBC inquiry classes have not prepared me well enough to try and implement it into practice.  I feel like I need more guidance and flexibility to try different models of teaching before deciding on what my inquiry question should be.  I felt like they really forced us to pick a teaching models even before we begin to do actual inquiry.  I would like to have had the opportunity to try many teaching methods and models to come to my own conclusions before deciding to choose TGFU or inventing games models as my main focus.  Of course I will continue to try these models, but now I feel like my inquiry is not going well and I may have to change my inquiry question.

 

Practicum week 2 thoughts

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This week was very interesting to experience.  There were constant highs and lows that were not things that I felt prepared for.  I felt like all my highlights for the week were all little things related to establishing myself as a teacher in the classroom.  Little things like being asked by students if I had time to stay after class to ask questions, or having students email me questions just to make sure that they are on the right track for their assignment made me feel like I was officially viewed as their teacher.  This made me feel good because the students feel comfortable and trust me enough to ask me questions now.  The low points of this week were all related to executing lessons and getting lesson activities done in the time I allotted for them.  Three days in a row I didn’t manage to dismiss my PE class on time, causing students to be late for their second block.

I find that none of the UBC courses actually prepared me enough for either of these situations.  For my PE methodology class, it prepared me to create a lesson, have back up and extension activities, but it didn’t really teach me how to think on the spot to modify my lesson so that I would be able to teach everything that I needed to cover while still being flexible with my time.  I found that this was the main source of my trouble with dismissing students on time this week.  On the flip side they also never prepared me enough for the joy that we would feel about all the little milestones and successes along the way, such as with students asking me for help and questions outside of class.

Practicum week 1 thoughts

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Going into my practicum, I thought that I would excel in teaching PE and struggle with teaching socials.  However, once I started, I realized how it is the complete opposite to my expectations.  I’m not sure if it was because I thought I would struggle with socials, so I put more effort into creating more fun lessons, or if it’s just the dynamics of the classes that I’m teaching.  With my PE class, I’m noticing that some students just want to play full games of volleyball, they did not feel motivated to try the drills and activities that I set out for them to do.  I am curious on how they will respond when I put my inquiry into practice this coming week by getting them to create their own games/drills/activities to teach their peers.  I wonder if they will rise to the challenge or if they will choose to want to play a “real” game of volleyball again.

Putting the theory taught at UBC about classroom management into practice, I realize how well some of the theories actually work really well.  The students in my PE class that seem to disengage the most actually do what I tell them to when I use teacher presence by standing close by to them or look in their direction from time to time.  Similarly, in my socials class, students will stop talking after I try to get their attention.  When I fail to get their attention, I just stand in the middle or front of the room quietly, with my hand up and/or looking directly at the people talking the most.

This coming week I hope to find a way to engage all of my PE class to participate and have fun, by engaging them all at their own level.  This is why I would like to try putting my inquiry to practice.