Tag Archives: practicum

Practicum week 7 thoughts

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This week I attempted to put my inquiry project to use and had both my PE 10 and PE 11/12 do an inventing games unit.  Over the span of four days, the students invented games that were very genius in nature and their peers seemed to have a lot of fun playing the different games.  Based on my observations, the grade 11/12s had no problem doing the unit, in fact they seemed to enjoy it because it gave them a lot of “free time”.  My grade 10 students on the other hand did what was required of them, but they seemed to be going through the motions.  I explained to them that this was the testing of a new concept of teaching and that most of my colleagues are also trying it out at their practicum schools.  At the end of the unit, I asked them for feedback and they all thought that it was not as enjoyable as actually playing traditional games.  Upon conferring with other colleagues, one had the exact same response from her grade 9s and a few others will report back once they have tried their inventing games units with their classes.

I think one problem that has been brought up before by other UBC BEd students and former BEd students is how much they disliked the amount of theory that the program teaches us about.  At the retail store that I work at, I get a lot of teachers as customers and they all say very similar things about the program.  I wonder if there is a way to actually take away theory and actually test things so that every year, the new teacher candidates will learn things that are not theoretical, and instead will learn things about what was tested by the previous year’s teacher candidates.  All the theoretical things taught to us seem so interesting, exciting and new to us, but to the students, it seems like we’re taking away their enjoyment of PE.  I believe that if we are to be true to our goal of developing life long activity in our students, we need to take away theory and use previous application experiences to guide our teaching methods.

Practicum week 6 thoughts

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This last week went by very quickly, there was a lot of excitement happening at the school with spirit week, Senior boys provincial basketball game, and the anticipation of the arrival of spring break.  I felt like all of my classes were performing exceptionally well as a whole.  The only problem I had was with my senior PE class, this is the class that I just picked up and have the least exposure to so far.  The first week that I had them went smoothly, because it was well organized and combined with the other three PE classes in that block.  This week was a bit of a roller coaster ride with the senior PE class.  The week started out well with our dance performances with guest appearances by two other teachers/teacher candidates.  The students were well behaved, very supportive of each other, and engaged in what was happening.  The next day I introduced the inventing games unit, and for the rest of the week we invented games from the “target games” from the TGFU model (Click here for my criteria that I used for inventing games).  I started the unit by teaching them my invented game called “disc bocce” (Click here for lesson plan on disc bocce).  Surprisingly, the students were really into the game and were having more fun than I expected.  The actual inventing games aspect took a little while for all the groups the get settled down and get working, but for the most part, they were all engaged in inventing their games.  On the final day before spring break, I had them teach each other their invented games and they were rowdier than usual.  I’m not sure if it was because it was the day before spring break, or the fact that target games are less active by nature and they wanted to move, or I just have not 100% earned their respect as their teacher just yet, or a combination of all of the above.  It just disheartened me a little bit because I thought senior PE was going to be easy to control because they are older and should be more “mature”.

It was definitely interesting trying out the inventing games model.  This was a model taught to my PE cohort by the actual inventor of this teaching model (Dr. Joy Butler from UBC).  She strongly believes that this is the way to go in order to motivate students to play and have fun while learning at the same time.  It was funny the students reactions when they found out that they were the one’s having to invent the games and not that I invent a bunch of games for them to play.  For the most part I think Dr. Butler is actually onto something by creating this teaching model.  I was very pleased at how all the groups of students came up with games completely unique from each other.  One group even took away the sedentary nature of conventional target games and added a role that required a lot of moving around and tossing game objects.

Practicum week 5 thoughts

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Last week was generally a very good week.  There was only one lesson that I thought could have worked differently if I had organized it differently.  I got my Socials 9 class to do a carousel activity where at each station groups would read a section in the textbook then write down a question for the next group to answer.  The all the following groups would then read the section, answer the question, and write a new question for the next group.  In theory, this would have been a great learning activity.  However, what started happening was that students started wandering and certain individuals started doing all the work for their groups.  Thinking back, some things that I may decide to do to combat these issues are:

  1. Get students seated and enforce that they be seated when doing the group work
  2. Have a different student do the reading and writing at each table so that more people are involved and on task
  3. Have a brain break half way through the activity so that students aren’t always focused on the content at hand

When I was taught this activity at UBC, I thought it was a great activity because it got students moving and thinking at the same time.  Potentially students would have less inactivity because they are moving to the next station (physical activity) and then reading and writing at the stations (mental activity).  The problem with how it was taught to me was that it was very generally taught, instructors did not go into detail on different ways to keep students on task, or how to actually organize it.  All of my suggested changes to the activity came from my own reflection and discussion with my Socials SA.

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.