Tag Archives: teaching

My life as a Teacher in the UK: Welcome to Mr. Dengler’s Class

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This was the look I had on the first day that I entered “MY” classroom, and it basically says it all.

It’s hard to tell if I’m surprised that this is all happening, if I’m giddy with excitement, or scared out of my wits unsure of what I’ve gotten myself into.

I guess thinking back, it was a bit of everything.  As some teens and young adults would say,I have started “adulting”.  This was a huge step for me.  Not only is this my first full-time career job, I also had to start learning to do things by myself (such as calling utility companies and setting up different accounts).

Teaching at Lynn Grove is so different from anything I’ve ever experienced.  I currently teach 9 different classes in total, which is more than double what I’ve ever taught at once.  I had to learn everything quickly and it took me a long time to catch up to all my work.  I had to learn the curriculum, find out where the students had left off at, as well as learning the school policies and operating procedures.  In my posts while I am teaching at Lynn Grove, I will be talking about British school life, classroom experiences and comparisons to previous teaching experiences in Canada.

UBC CFE Day 12 (Tuesday)

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After observing exams yesterday and today, here are some things that I have noticed:

  1. Students do not help set up the classroom into exam formation, unless asked multiple times or nagged
  2. When students start exams, they seem to know well in advance what is expected because they don’t seem to have questions about the exams themselves
  3. Teachers take different stances in the exam room (some stay in one general location in the class and only move when students have questions, others constantly move around the room).

Point number one taught me one thing.  Students have trouble with verbal cues.  From my own experiences, I need to have drawn a diagram on the board in advance in order for students to even get an idea of what I want them to do.  Another thing that it showed me was that in a classroom where they use the individual coloured chairs, it may be great for teaching lessons, but when it comes to exams, it is a mess to try and set up and organize.  Since the chairs are individual from each other, one needs to move each and every chair into place.  On top of that, the chairs are wheeled so students will keep moving around.  I prefer a class where there are desks set up in a way that students can just come in, find a spot and then are ready for their exam.

Point number two showed me that teachers probably prepared their students weeks in advance on what to expect for the exam.  I remember telling students a weekend before a test and they would still have questions on the day of the test.  This taught me that students who are well prepared and know what to expect seem to panic less.  This is probably something that I should remember so that students don’t panic as much on the day of the test.

The last point is more of a personal preference thing.  From my own experience, I have done both of the mentioned ways of invigilating an exam.  It all depends on if I have things to do.  I have walked around the classroom answering questions as needed, I have also sat at a desk watching the room while marking things on my computer.  I feel like it just depends on how confident the teacher is with the environment that they set up for non-cheating.  Personally, I feel like during my practicum, I set up a pretty good environment where students didn’t feel like they had to cheat.

UBC CFE Day 8 (Wednesday)

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Today we helped out in three classes, all of them were some sort of English class.

In the first class we helped students with their presentations about countries they would like to visit.  The groups first presented to us so that we could see their overall presentation.  Afterwards, we worked in small groups to help individual students work on memorization, presentation tips, and pacing.  The one student that I worked with the most asked me for my suggestions and I taught her some tricks.  for pacing, I helped edit her script by shortening parts by simplifying things and by taking out unnecessarily extensive/repetitive parts.  In terms of memorization and presentation tips, I suggested having a PowerPoint slide for each paragraph she had, and to have short notes and pictures to help guide her through her presentation.  In doing so, she can use the pictures to guide her thoughts and also help her classmates with staying engaged and understanding what she is presenting.  I made great progress with this student, we aimed for 1 minute and 30 seconds for reciting her part of the group presentation.  Her initial trial was 1 minute and 35 seconds, and after editing her script, she read the script at a slower pace but there was better emphasis and she managed to finish reading the script in 1 minute and 25 seconds (10 seconds less than her first trial).

In the second class, we did the same game that we did on Monday with a different class.  What I observed this time around is that this group of girls were less active and competitive than the other group on Monday.  Despite what seemed like a lack of interest, this class still claimed to also have fun with this game.  This goes to prove that the same lesson can be received differently by different classes based on class dynamics.

The third class was also working on creating presentations.  This class was researching styles of art and artists.  The one group I helped the most was researching about origami.  They asked my opinion on which thing to fold and research about.  I suggested the origami crane because it is probably the most famous item to fold.  I also suggested looking up the story about the 1,000 origami cranes, as they didn’t know the significance about the origami cranes.  This taught me the significance of incorporating other countries cultural themes to get a better world view when doing projects.

UBC CFE Day 6 (Monday)

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Today we were transferred to another school.  This new school is an all-girls Catholic school.  There was a lot of anxiety going into the school as Tim (another teacher candidate) and I are two young male teacher candidates and didn’t know what to expect from a school with all girls (and only 4-5 male teachers).  Despite our anxieties, we just went with the flow and everything turned out alright.  This school had a class system that I’ve never seen before.  In all the schools that I’ve been in in Canada, the teachers have their own classroom(s) and students go to the appropriate classes.  In Technologico de Monterrey both teachers and students move from classroom to classroom depending on what was scheduled for their classes (just like in university).  At this girls’ Catholic School, the students stay in their classroom (except for certain subjects) and the teachers goes around to different classrooms based on the subjects they teach.  I think it is an interesting concept, however, it means that there is a certain amount of time where the classrooms have no teacher, which opens up the opportunity for the students to cause trouble.

In the classes we attended today, we were less observer and more teacher.  Since there was an English teacher that was  absent, we acted as her substitutes.  For one class they just had to use vocabulary words in sentences to show their understanding.  We revamped the lesson by encouraging drawing pictures or a comic, writing paragraphs or a short story.

The next class compared and contrasted “The Outsiders” movie and novel.  We used a think-pair-share style of discussion, this seemed to work very well, because the girls really like to talk in class, and the think-pair-share allows for a lot of talking.

The last class that we were in had the teacher present in class.  She had asked us before the class to create an activity for the students to do a review of the their course content.  Even though we ourselves are not English teachers, so we didn’t know exactly the technical things, the activity was good enough that the teacher wanted to keep so that she could use it for another one of her classes.  This game starts by having the teacher(s) draw two pre-made slips of paper, one with a basic English sentence another with the tense that students had to transpose the sentence into.  The students, who were already split into teams, would discuss the answers and send a representative racing to the front to write it on the board.  The first team to write the correct answer would get a point for their team.  The girls got very engaged with the game and were super competitive.

What today taught me was thinking quickly on your feet as a substitute teacher.  During my practicum I had filled in occasionally for my SAs, but those were in my teachable subjects.  This taught me to think quickly and improvise in a subject that is not in my teachable areas.

UBC CFE Day 5 (Friday)

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This morning, we decided that if the bus never stops where the bus stop is that we would wait where the bus stopped the last two days.  Of course this time the bus stopped exactly where we were.

To start the day we went to two English classes.  Both classes were of students the same age and were doing similar things in each class, however, the one difference between the two classes were that one was an IB class and the other was a regular English class.  Both classes had oral presentations, the IB class was presenting their oral exam practice for when they actually take their oral exam to send in to the IB officials.  The regular English class did an oral presentation on their school, life/vacations and hobbies.  It was interesting to see the how the classes were essentially teaching the same thing but the lessons were catered to two different demographics with two different end goals.

After watching the IB class, I think that it is a great idea to have an international standard of teaching and learning.  I have heard many stories about people who get their PHD in Medicine in places like China or India and their degree doesn’t mean anything without them taking another exam in Canada and the US.  I think that if there is an international standard, then there should be no problem transferring degrees across the world.

Another thing that we saw in the classrooms today was an interesting set up that could be extremely beneficial for student learning.

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As shown in the picture above, there are 4 colours of chairs that have their own individual tables and have the ability to roll around.  This is great for group work in the class, the teacher can create groups randomly by asking all people on same colour chairs to get together, or one of each colour to be in a group.  Another thing that we heard is that the tables can connect to make one big table once in a group too.  This will also help all the students that are hyperactive and have a need to constantly moving, this allows for movement within the class while staying seated and taking notes at the same time.  This is definitely something that I think Canadian schools should adopt.

UBC CFE Day 2 (Tuesday)

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Yesterday we learned something new… when a Mexican says a few blocks, it actually means less than a kilometre.  We were told to go 4 blocks in one direction to catch a bus to get to the school.  Afraid that we were going to miss the 6:12 bus, we woke up at 5:30 and headed out the door at 5:45.  After walking 10 minutes and not seeing the bus stop, we decided to turn around and go in the opposite direction.  After walking 12 minutes in the opposite direction, we finally found the place, it was literally 500m from the entrance of our apartment it was quite interesting.  On the way, we saw this gate that seemed very appropriate for us as we are on our CFE.

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The bus came 15 minutes late and the funny thing is that it doesn’t really stop at the bus stop, just approximately where it is.  It stopped to let on passengers about 10 metres past the bus stop, and here’s the kicker, it didn’t pull over, rather the driver flashed his blinkers and stopped in the middle of the road.  This is yet another story of how different our culture is to the Mexican culture.

At the school, we were introduced to various teachers and I met a Chinese teacher and we looked at each other funny wondering what another Chinese person was doing in Mexico.

The first teacher I observed was an English class, it was interesting because the teacher kept asking me for advice on grammar.  It was interesting for me because even though I speak English as my first language, I never realize how much slang we use in casual conversation, whereas here is was very proper English being taught.  What made it even more interesting was that English isn’t even the first language of many of the English teachers at the school.  Regardless, I was able to help in the class a little.  One thing that I taught the students was the difference of using “told” and “asked” when writing.  I explained that the implications are different, however using either is acceptable in written English.

Another class I observed was a literature class.  Even though the class was in Spanish, and the students were writing in Spanish, I was able to dedicate my time helping one student for the whole class.  He told me about his paper that he was writing and ran some ideas past me.  He then told me about another paper that he was expected to write about after the current paper was finished.  He asked me if I had read the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe.  I told him that I had read it ages ago, but was willing to try and help him understand the poem.  So I pulled up a pdf online in English and asked him to pull up a Spanish copy for himself.  We went through the poem stanza by stanza and discussed what he thought Poe might have been saying.  Through his broken English, my almost non-existent Spanish, and our translation apps, we managed to get through one page and get some ideas flowing for him to think about.  This class showed me how valuable technology and smaller class sizes would be beneficial for classes with high ELL students.

Practicum weeks 9 & 10 thoughts

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These last two weeks have been a blur.  It was an emotional roller coaster where I knew I was going to pass my practicum, but I still had to work hard to make sure that I maintain the best reputation that I could.  These two weeks made me feel the most connected to my students and it was a bittersweet moment when we had to part ways.  I so moved that students who I thought were unreceptive to my teaching actually came up to me and started telling me how much they think I’m a good teacher, also other students who I knew enjoyed my lessons would come up to me and ask if there was any way I could stay and teach longer.  These comments made me feel like I had actually accomplished something in the time that I was with them.  I was even more moved when one girl who usually didn’t care in class came up to me and handed in all the homework that she had missed.

Another thing that made me burst with pride was when two students with IEPs got class average marks on the last unit test that I gave them.  This was probably the biggest accomplishment that I had this whole practicum.  One of the two students finished his test and said to me, “I’m surprised at how many questions I felt like I knew the answers to.”  This particular student got below 50% on all his previous unit tests with me, and then he suddenly had some sort of epiphany and the content stuck.  These two students with IEPs had also started gaining confidence to join in discussions and to answer questions out loud in class by the 5th or 6th week that I was with them.  I became so proud of them that every time I marked their work, I cheered every mark they got correct and  begged them in my head to get a decent mark.

This practicum has helped me grow in many dimensions.  I was able to connect with students on a personal level while still maintaining the structure, command and order that a classroom should have.  I found a balance between what I wanted to try, with what my SAs and FA wanted me to do, and what students wanted to do in class.  I cannot express my gratitude for all the mentorship that I got from different staff, not just my SAs, and also my appreciation for the students who accepted me as their teacher and learned from me.

Practicum week 8 thoughts

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For week 8 I was challenged to reflect on my practicum by my Faculty Advisor,  here were the questions to consider and my answers to them.  It definitely made me think about what I had actually achieved in the short amount of time that I was at McNair Secondary School

1.How have you contributed to the school community (what were you involved in outside of the classroom)?

I have contributed to the school community by guest judging in McNair’s singing competition, playing on the teacher’s lunch hour intramural sports team, and coaching and sponsoring the grade 8 boys’ volleyball team

2.Describe the different ways that you addressed diversity in the classroom (provided individualized instruction – adapted or modified- or helped students that needed additional support)?

In PE class, I did not need to address individualized instruction as all students were able to understand through my demonstrations, and all students with disabilities had their own personal Educational Assistants who would help them.

 In Socials class, I addressed diversity by teaching with different multimedia tools and using a variety of activities that accommodate different types of learning styles.  I additionally supported students by offering myself outside of class time (e.g. lunch time, after school), in these situations, I would sit down with students and guide them to appropriate answers for projects and assignments by asking guiding questions.  For in class work or test time, I allow students who need/ask for extra help to go to the learning resources room.

3.List some of the different assessment practices you used beyond tests, quizzes, and questioning.

Think-pair-share

K/W/L

Carousel activity

Jigsaw activity

4.Give some examples of how you used group work in your lessons.

Paired projects

Group presentations

Creating a “talk show”

Jigsaw activity

Carousel activity

5.Give some examples of interesting hooks that you used in class to capture the students’ interest (how did you motivate the class)?

Video clips relating to course content (e.g. instructional, skits, songs, movie clips)

Picture analysis

Quote analysis

Current events/interesting thought or video (unrelated to course content) of the day

6.Give some examples of innovative teaching practices and/or creative activities that you used to engage students in learning (aside from lecture, power point, question & answer, lab experiments)

Jeopardy review

Kahoot

Creating a talk show

Drawing comics

Writing short stories

Simulations

7.Describe a lesson that you are particularly proud of.  Why are you proud of this lesson and why do you feel it was so effective?

I was particularly proud of my simulation lesson of French culture and social classes before the rise of the French Revolution.  My simulation generated feelings similar to that of the actual people of the French society of that time.  I had students try to start an uprising on the people who were “wealthy” in the simulation.  The actual words said during the simulation were, “Can we start a Revolution and take their money from them…” I was pleased because I did not expect the feelings to actual rise up in this way, I just wanted them to get an appreciation and general idea of how different social classes felt.  This lesson was effective because in lessons after that, I could refer back to their feelings during the simulation to give them a more personal perspective on why different events happened the way they did during the French Revolution (e.g. why did certain people rise to power, why did the general public allow these people rise to power, what sort of things were promised to the general public that would sound appealing to agree to let these people rise to power, etc.)

8.What professional development activities have you participated in?

Professional development day at Cambie Secondary School

Collaboration day meetings

McNair staff meetings

Networking with veteran teachers from various schools and TOCs by sharing ideas and receiving practical advice

9.Is there any other information that you would like to share that would help me with your report?

All teachers and TOCs who observed my lessons have told me that I do a good job building strong relationships with my students.  Most students respect my authority and work hard to do well in my class.  Two out of the three classes that I taught were disappointed when they found out when I announced when I was leaving and specifically asked if I could stay longer.

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.