Category Archives: Practicum Reflection

03/4/16

Practicum Reflection: Lesson on Building Self-Confidence

This week at my practicum school, I targetted my lesson towards building self-confidence and a growth mindset with my students. I started my lesson by showing my students a picture of me when I was in Grade 1. I told my students about my story and how I always told myself “I can’t” because I was always afraid of failing. I then told my class that I have since learned that it is alright to fail and to make mistakes – it is better to try than to not try at all. I did a read aloud of “Anything Is Possible” by Giulia Belloni – a cute story about a sheep and wolf who try to build a flying machine. Their flying machine failed to fly after a couple tries, but the characters persevered and succeeded in  the end.

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We had a discussion about how it feels when we say “I can’t” to ourselves, with students commenting that it made them feel “sad” and “lonely.” Our class then brainstormed some phrases to say to ourselves instead of saying “I can’t.”  The students were involved and came up with some great phrases – some that I had not even thought of myself! In the end, we said all of the phrases together as a class. We then transitioned into journal time, where the students wrote something that they are good at doing and how it makes them feel when they do it. There were some great responses! Overall the lesson went really well and I am excited to continue to implement more lessons similar to this during my long practicum.

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02/12/16

Practicum Reflection: How Does a Frustrated Student Look Like?

Over the past weeks, I have discussed the different strategies of how teachers can build self-confidence and grit among the students. I have also delved into how building a positive classroom environment is essential in fostering these characteristics within students. I believe that now is a good time to take a step further and apply these strategies into students who get frustrated in completing classroom activities. But first, why do students get frustrated in the first place? What are some things that are going on in their minds when they feel defeated? I touched on this piece a little bit a couple months ago when I discussed the fight, flight, or freeze response in frustrated students.

To give a more concrete and practical example of an example of this process, I turn to my practicum school. On Thursday, I led an art activity with my Grade 1 students, where they had to create a fish made out of hearts. As I am quickly learning, art activities can be very loud and there is a lot going on at once – for a teacher candidate, this scenario can often be very intimidating! For the most part, the students did enjoy doing the activity, with some students asking if they could take home their fish that day. Nonetheless, there were some bumps along the way. One significant bump was that a couple students became visibly frustrated when they struggled with making heart shapes for the fish’s tail and head. These students were experiencing the “freeze” response, where they had come to the conclusion that they could not do it and in response, they sat on the floor or at their desks with their heads down. I gave them independent attention and walked through with them the steps on how to draw a heart and brought my own example that I used to demonstrate so that they could see the example closer up. In future, if there are multiple students who are struggling, instead of giving independent attention to each student, I  will instead gather the students together and walk through the steps as a group. This would prevent me from jumping from student to student and it would also help to ensure that students who are struggling, get the teacher support that they need in a timely manner.

By going through the process of my inquiry and of being at my practicum school, I am learning that there are many different elements that must come into place in order to help not only build a supportive classroom environment but to also help students build confidence to succeed within the classroom. Perhaps part of the issue is that there are many students and only one to two teachers in a classroom. For students who need extra support, it can be difficult as a teacher, to provide that constant support. This is why my inquiry question is so important to me, as a teacher candidate. I want to build that self-confidence in all of my students so that they do not get frustrated in the first place.

Reference:

Minahan, J., & Schultz, J.J. (2014;2015). Interventions can salve unseen anxiety barriers. Phi Delta Kappan, 96(4), 46-50. Doi: 10.1177/0031721714561446

01/29/16

Practicum Reflection: It’s All About Connections!

Throughout my Wise Wednesdays posts, I have been discussing about the importance of building connections with students through various ways. Time and time again, it has been emphasized that building connections with our students is so imperative in creating a positive and rich learning environment. Undoubtedly, this point has been emphasized for good reason. My experience in my practicum school has really hit home this point for me. Over the past few months, I have built a strong connection with many of the students in the class. Even though I am only at the school once a week, I still see snippets of their progress and little improvements, which I absolutely love to see. Some of the students are coming a long way with their reading and writing!

I will be the first to admit that there are a couple students in the class who I am still trying to build a connection with. I realize that not every student is always willing to come to me to share a story or two and that’s okay. Each week, I make an effort to talk to and have a conversation with a student that I have not yet established a strong connection with. For example, today I casually had some conversations with a couple students during snack time about how they were doing, what they were planning to do over the weekend, etc. It was a great time to connect, to learn more about their interests and hobbies, and to just learn more about their personality. It is with my hope that before I begin my 10-week practicum that I have made a strong connection to all of the students in the class.

01/22/16

Practicum Reflection: Be Flexible!

As a teacher candidate, I have learned immensely from both learning about theories and practices at UBC to applying that newfound knowledge in my practicum school. If there is one thing that I am quickly learning, it is that time is rarely on your side as a teacher. Today was one of those days. I planned to give my class some motivation to help them gain some self-confidence before they started on their Journals. When I had arrived to the school in the morning, I was energized and excited to give the class a motivational speech. However, as I was carrying out my lesson, I noticed that the students were getting restless after sitting for over twenty five minutes, as my read-aloud went longer than anticipated. There were some things that I had not initially planned, which put me behind schedule in my lesson. I knew that I wanted to give the students enough time to finish their journal writing and practice their spelling words on the iPads, thus I came to the quick decision that the motivational speech had to wait for another day. I was disappointed that I could not get to the motivational speech, but I realized that I had to be flexible and that there were other things that needed to get done. This event made me understand that as a teacher, you could have planned the best lesson ever, but if something pops up or if something unexpected happens during the lesson, chances are, you are going to have to adjust your “perfect” lesson plan. It has been emphasized within my classes at UBC that being flexible is key to being an effective teacher. Now that I have experienced what it feels like to be tight on time and to have unexpected things happen, I finally understand that point now.

Even though I did not have the chance to give motivation to the entire class, I did spend some time to motivate individual students who were struggling with their writing. I motivated and tried to improve their self-confidence by saying that I believed in them or that I wanted to see them give their best effort in spelling a word. As part of my inquiry question, one of my goals is to improve the self-confidence of my students so that they do not feel defeated when approached with a difficult task. As a class, we are still making some slow progress in that aspect. Over the coming months, and definitely into my long practicum, I want to do various activities with the students in order to help increase their self-confidence in their skills and abilities. In the future, I will create a chart with the class that promotes positive messages. For example, instead of saying, “I can’t”, they can say, “I will keep trying!” I hope that I can then display this chart at the front of the class, which the students can refer to when they feeling frustrated with their work.