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This week I took the biology 11 students outside as part of the mosses unit. It was an interesting experience and the first time that I had taught a lesson outside of the classroom. It was definitely outside of my comfort zone, but I was very lucky to have Mr. Wolfe there to guide me and give me pointers on how to make it an effective teaching strategy. Even small things like making sure that the students are not facing the light when you speak with them so that they can see what you are pointing at, I had not thought of before. Techniques to maintain effective student management, like arranging the class into a semi-circle around you so that you can see all of them at once were also very helpful. It stressed me out to have students not all stuck inside of one room where I could keep an eye on all of them simultaneously without needing to even turn around… but I’m glad I did it.

At UBC we discussed using inquiry and alternative strategies to lecturing to build student engagement. I am glad that I tried this method of teaching because I saw some students who were normally very quiet in the classroom environment suddenly leap to the front of the group, eager to participate when outdoors. Being able to see and experience science in the world around you is also very different from just learning it in the classroom and I hope it will become a memorable experience for them. In the future I also hope to find more ways to get students engaged in science and learning outside of the classroom. One big regret I have is not planning for a field trip during practicum, but fingers crossed there will be an opportunity for that in the future!

This was an interesting past two weeks for me because I have taken on a Biology 11 class and I’ve had a much different strategy in choosing what to prepare for lessons in that class compared to Science 10. Science 10 is all about preparing for the provincial exam. I don’t feel like I have a lot of freedom to explore related and interesting topics because I need to make sure that I hit everything in the textbook. Lest something I didn’t cover make its way onto the exam. Biology 11 is totally different and refreshing. Of course I still have to make sure that I adhere to the IRP, but within that there is so much more room for creativity and exploration. I can choose to cover or not cover specific details depending on how valuable they are academically and how interesting I think they are to learn. Wonderful!

At UBC there has been a lot of talk about the new curriculum being skills, not content focused and I am hoping that is the case. It is certainly more difficult to prepare lessons for Biology 11 because there isn’t a go-to resource like the Science 10 textbook that has everything I need to prepare in it. But it is much more rewarding personally because the lesson content that I choose to prepare is more meaningful to me, and I also therefore think I can teach it more passionately. I was given the chance to cover the microbiology section… my major in university! So I had a lot of experience I could draw upon for lessons, activities, and labs. It’s a great feeling to be able to use my use my passion to help students learn in the classroom, and I need to develop strategies to work that into courses like Science 10 where the content is more restricted. I think it would be difficult, but not impossible, and certainly rewarding.

This week I changed over from my Science and Technology class to my Biology 11 class. I’ll see the Bio 11s through until the end of my practicum… which is only a few weeks away now! Wow, times goes by quickly. I discovered something interesting which is in how I assess my students’ understanding formatively, and I think it has been lacking so far. For my Science 10s I have not been monitoring homework. My philosophy has been that if you choose not to do the homework, you choose to reap the consequences when the summative assessment comes. This philosophy is based on my own experiences as a student in recent memory, but I believe I had forgotten how much nudging I needed in Grade 10 to actually get work done. Students being off-task during work periods has been a constant struggle, and I think I have been at fault for most of that. I need to not stop treating the students as responsible, but realize that they need a bit of help and that I by being a bit more on them about homework I will hopefully actually be doing them a favour.

This relates to UBC because my courses often discussed strategies for formative assessment that don’t involve grades. I plan to collect the homework, but won’t mark it for correctness. I want to just give them a quick read and a checkmark, star, or blank depending on the effort the student put forwards to understand. The issue is not to punish students who get homework wrong, it is to encourage actually thinking about it which will hopefully keep students paying attention more during class and working more during the time after a lesson.

This week I ran my first unit test for the Science 10s. It was definitely an interesting experience and I think I did some things well, but other things not so well. I did a decent job going over what would be expected for students to know on the test, and I also put up that information in the form of learning objectives on my class website for the students to see. I also think the design of the test was decent, where some students finished with 15 or so minutes remaining and others taking a bit longer, but nobody had to stay beyond the bell. However, I tried to do something different on the test and make it have a “theme” and I think this ended up not working. It was a chemistry test and I had a paragraph or two before each question that framed the student as the lead chemistry of a company developing a cure for the common cold, who then had to use their chemistry knowledge to complete the process of making the drug.

For more students it was probably a neutral thing. I didn’t get any positive feedback from the students about it, so it probably didn’t make a big difference either way. However, I neglected to consider the effect it would have on my ELL students. The actual questions weren’t that hard, but like my UBC courses mentioned the language is not the focus of the test, and I made it out to be that way. I was trying to do something fun and different, hopefully increasing the enjoyment of the test and reducing stress by adding some humour and personality, but in the end I think I did more harm than good. In the future if I were to do this again, and I’m not sure I would, it would be abundantly clear where the irrelevant information ended and the actual questions began. I could use different types of formatting to make it clear, and even give explicit verbal instructions to the class or on a student-by-student basis. Overall the average for the test seemed about right at 70% or so, so I don’t think it was a disaster, but I can improve lots for next time!

This week I took on my third course to reach my “full” 75% practicum teaching load. I put full in quotations because it is not really a full load, and as a teacher I would expect to have a 100% load for one half of the school year. It was quite an interesting experience because I underestimated how difficult the jump from 50% to 75% would be. I considered that I would have less prep time during the day, and I realized that I would have more that I would need to prepare, but I didn’t really think about the two of them together. So far it has been manageable, but I have been staying later at school after the final bell to catch up from the day.

It reminds me of my UBC courses because I have also had to become smarter with managing my time. I need to budget time for specific things during the mornings, after school, and during my “prep” block. Things like preparing for lessons, marking assessments, and getting labs or demonstrations ready. Especially during the last few months of courses at UBC I had to do the same. I needed to be smart with my time and budget for studying, writing assignments, and preparing for the practicum start. Hmm… I do believe that this will be a consistent theme in teaching for me! Time management will be very important. I will need to come up with good strategies now so that I can cope as a first-year teacher and avoid burnout.

This week I had an interesting experience involving student plagiarism. A group of eight students whom I all know to be friends worked together on a lab report that was only supposed to be done in pairs. It was essentially identical between all four groups with the odd exception of word order or formatting. I contemplated what to do, asked my school associates for their opinions, and after a day or so of thinking about it, I came up with a solution that I think is appropriate. I pulled the groups aside and had a private discussion with each of them, explaining the situation that they had put themselves into. Though they had each submitted a high-quality report, I could not accept it as representative of their individual abilities because they had all worked on it or copied it from each other. Instead of giving a zero or omitting the assignment, I decided to get each group to send me an email to which I would reply with a new set of lab discussion questions. They should then reply to my email with thoughtful answers to each of the questions in order to receive their original marks on the report. Should the same thing occur again, they will have to redo the entire report, not just the discussion section of it.

This relates to my UBC courses because my instructors talked to me about the importance of student accountability and teaching life skills in addition to academic ones. My solution requires thought and action on the part of the students and also has clear escalating consequences in the case of a repeat offence, while at the same time acknowledging that students make mistakes and that they should be given a second chance to demonstrate their knowledge rather than solely punished. I was also glad that I got to put to use my knowledge of the Repair Kit for Grading chapter that I read during the short practicum! I think I can improve on my handing of the situation in the future, however. I think that I should be more precisely clear on what is expected of students and lab groups, and I should explicitly state my policy on coping and plagiarizing fellow students’ work before the situation arises in the first place. I am finding that being excessively clear up front is the best way to avoid confusion and vague expectations with my students. I struggle with that and I need to continue to improve on it in the future.

This week I attended by first real Pro D experience. I say “real” because I went to a Pro D session during Term 1, but I couldn’t appreciate it in the context of actually teaching. This Pro D session had me go to Cambie Secondary in Richmond for something called Ed Camp. There were three sessions throughout the day: the first was a district-wide Science department meeting, then the second two I was free to choose from quite a large list. I went to one session on inquiry based learning and the second I spent with the other McNair science teachers working on the new curriculum. There were no facilitators at any of the sessions. The teachers were supposed to work with each other to discuss and enhance their understanding of the topic at hand. I wasn’t so sure of the format to start with, but in the end it worked out!

It was an interesting experience because I found it to be very similar to my UBC course work in that it is only as useful as I make it to be. It’s very easy to coast through the sessions as a passive listener and not really get anything out of it. It takes a lot more effort, but being an active participant and contributing to the discussion by asking questions and offering experience is much more fulfilling. I went through the first science session without saying much of anything, but by the time I went to the afternoon sessions I felt more comfortable and was able to participate more. I remember a lot more from those sessions and I took away some really great ideas for how to teach science using inquiry. Overall, the day was a great learning experience both about how Pro D days run and how to be an effective teacher!

Week 2 was an interesting experience for me. I think that overall I improved as a teacher (slightly!) and did better in the front of the class. I was less nervous, more confident, knew all the students names, and really was able to lead the class. However, I feel a little less good about Week 2 than Week 1. I think this is because the relief that I felt during the first week that everything was going to be okay has worn off. I am starting to see the areas where I need to improve and I am going to have to work hard on improving those areas. I knew that classroom management was going to be my biggest area of weakness going into the practicum, so it’s no surprise that I am struggling a little bit with it. The Grade 10s are a fantastic, good group of students but they have a lot of energy. I need to develop techniques to channel that energy into Chemistry!

This relates to my UBC courses because even though we went over many techniques for classroom management, one thing that my instructors emphasized quite heavily is that there is no “magic bullet” for classroom management. I am going to have to try a bunch of techniques and see what works. I feel that I have a good relationship with the students and I don’t want to give that up by being a total police officer in the class, but I am going to have to try some things that might not be the most popular moves. In the near future I want to set a new seating plan to split up the most talkative groups of students and get those who really need to concentrate close to the front of the room. We’ll see how it all goes in Week 3!

Wow. First week was crazy. There’s too much to write down absolutely everything that happened, so I’ll include a highlight instead. On Friday I did the reactive metals demonstration. This is where you place metals like calcium, lithium, magnesium, and sodium into water and watch the reaction that takes place. Most of them fizz in the water while they react with it, creating a strong base in the water as well as hydrogen gas that bubbles off. Sodium in particular reacts vigorously enough that the hydrogen gas actually gets set on fire, making a nice flame that dances around the water bowl. After a few moments, just when the flame is starting to go out, it starts to spark and smoke like crazy. The students loved it because it  was so surprising and made a spectacular show (and kids love when things go up in flames and smoke in general!)

Relating this to UBC course work, I’m glad that I took the advice of my methods instructors and planned this demo only in relation to the class work we’ve been doing. I didn’t just do the demo because it made cool fireworks. I did it because it was directly related to the chemistry we were learning. The kids loved it, and it was really surprising to me how much they payed attention to the lesson during that class. I feel like it was because I started talking about how the reactions we just saw were related to the class work for the day. They now had something to relate to the lesson in a much more memorable way than notes. I hope this will help them make connections in their brains. After seeing this, I definitely would not do a demo for the class just because it was fun. Not because I don’t like fun, but because I have seen how much the students were able to take the energy from the demo and put it towards learning. Great experience!