Wow, I don’t understand how the two weeks are already over, it seems like we just went in for the first day yesterday and now the two weeks are over. It honestly went by way too quickly and I wish this short practicum could have lasted longer. Like I have said previously, actually being in the classroom and taking part in teaching has definitely reinforced my aspiration to become a teacher. This last week was somewhat different from the first week in that I had a more active role in the classroom. The first week I did a lot of observing so that I could better understand the classroom dynamics and structure. In a sense, I feel like in the first week I was trying to build relationships and recognize important details about the class and their learning. I feel like these initial understandings really informed my teaching this week. I felt as the week went along and I carried out each of my lessons, I learned more and more about managing the class. And because of this I felt more confident with each lesson.

After my first big lesson at the beginning of the week, I made a conscious effort to focus on some specific areas of classroom management so that I could deliver my remaining lessons as effectively as possible. The first area I looked into was giving instructions to students. I have realized that to be perfectly clear with instructions, I need to look at my instructions from a student’s perspective. So, just because I understand a set of directions, this does not guarantee that the students will completely understand as well. So, what I did was look at my instructions for my lessons and think are there any questions students might ask as I give these instructions and then I did some modifications to include the answers to these questions in my instructions. For example, in one of my socials artifacts lesson, I thought the students might go through the activity and figure out whom the artifacts belong to really quickly and then they will think they are done. So, I tried to make it really clear in my instructions that I do not just want them to tell me who the artifacts belong to but I also need a solid explanation for why each of the artifacts would belong to that certain person. Along with this, to make my instructions as clear as possible, I tried to emphasize important words as I spoke. I did this by changing my tone to a higher pitch or generally speaking a little louder when I was saying something important. And when I would do this, I tried to pause a little between speaking so students really could understand that they need to pay attention to that part of my instructions. Then after giving the instructions myself, I tried to get students to repeat the instructions as much as I could. And I feel like this helps the students as they word the instructions a little different and in a way that I believe they find most easy to understand. Also, this lets me know if students’ understanding matches what I tried to instruct. This way if I notice any confusion, I can address it.

Another area of classroom management that I focused on was student attention. I have noticed there is a lot of participation in this class. However, a majority of the time, the participation is from the same group of students. So, for one of the group activities in my socials lesson, I thought to assign each student a role. Each student was given a role card so that they would all be contributing to the group in different ways. When having a class discussion and asking questions, I have learned that I am going to have to call on students because they will not answer on their own. And this is not just for questions, I feel like I was confident enough to even call out on students when they just were not paying attention when one of the other students or I was speaking. I also thought this strategy helps to clarify my position in the class; specifically, that I will be teaching them and when I do teach that time is not just “free time,” they actually need to pay attention. Similarly, I learned I need to wait for everyone’s attention before I begin speaking/instructing and this can be as simple as just standing at the front of the class, but not speaking until everyone is ready to listen. And it is really interesting to see how students react to this; they do in fact realize what I (or my S.A.) am doing and begin to tell off-task students to pay attention. In a way, this allows students to self-regulate and through this they could develop a better understanding of my expectations while I teach. In terms of expectations, I tried to make clear how I expect my questions to be answered. So before I asked a question I would say “hands up…” I do feel like I’m trying to build some clear expectations and be somewhat firm with time because I always remember how we were told to be firm to begin with and develop rules and boundaries and then slowly pull back to become less firm over time.

Something I would really like to work on for the rest of the term comes under Section 6: Classroom Climate of the Performance checklist – wait time. I mentioned above that a lot of the same students are repeatedly raising their hands to participate in class discussions. I discussed this with my school advisor and we concluded that it would be valuable to allow for a longer wait-time between the time I ask a question and pick on a student to answer. This way more students will have the time to raise their hands to contribute. Along with this, wait time can be provided by allowing the time to think and first share with a neighbor and then with the rest of the class (think-pair-share). This probably helps ease the anxiety of some students who fear sharing their ideas with the entire class. That is, they can first share with just one partner and reassure each other or even modify their answers/ideas to something they would feel more comfortable sharing with the rest of the class.

Along with this, I would like to continue developing my relationship with a special needs student in my class – something that would come under Section 4: Diversity and Social Justice. An item on this section reads “demonstrates sensitivity to individual diversity.” Keeping this in mind, it is my goal to cultivate a positive relationship with this student by learning and understanding the type of interactions that work best for this student. That is, those which garner the best response from her. I have noticed this student does not appreciate if others push to communicate with her. For example, it is harder to start a conversation with her and maintain the conversation; it is better to build on what she offers. And the more this happens, the more she will offer. I hope that once I am able to build communication with this student – which will probably occur with the help of my SA and the E.A. – then I can eventually get her to do academic work. And looking back to this past week, I was able to get this student to complete some work and she even shared it with me at the end. What I noticed was, in order to get her to agree to academic work, the instructions need to be kept fairly short and there needs to be a reward set to be received upon completion. All these little interactions with this student are helping to foster a positive relationship with her. Already it has been great learning for me as I am gaining an understanding of diverse learning styles and how to best accommodate and incorporate them into the classroom.

Truth be told, I could go on and on about these past two weeks. But to end off, I would like to say I truly know it was a fantastic experience because I am just waiting for the day we get to back into the classroom!