Teacher practicum reflection – week 5
The end of this week marks the halfway point in my teaching practicum. This week was a bit of a change for me, in that the grade 8s are usually the class I’m more excited about and which are better behaved for me, but this week it was completely the opposite and my grade 10s were the ones who I had the most breakthroughs with in terms of what we learned and how we interacted with each other.
The grade 8 classes got somewhat different lessons this week. The grade 8s in my 2-3 block were short a class in order to ensure that the unit test was not split between the beginning and end of spring break. This meant that they had a class that served as a fusion of my two lessons on the Sui and Tang Dynasties. This class, because it was missing much of the contextual information and other pieces that helped truly identify the Dynasties and their differences, was not as successful as my class that had the two separate lessons, one for each of the two Dynasties being discussed. The grade 8 classes did not react well to having the test on Thursday and Friday before spring break, with many students becoming restless through the week and creating new challenges for my classroom management. This was partially because the week prior was much more interactive and I did allow for quite a bit more noise and disruption than would normally be considered acceptable in a social studies classroom, but which would have been detrimental to the continuation of the simulation that I had tried.
The Grade 10 classes were the ones where I took more chances and really broke through with them. On Thursday and Friday I taught a class on the Residential Schools, and I felt that beyond a few timing issues and my usual level of nervousness in the classroom, it went very well. The students were extremely respectful towards the topic material, and I felt that they worked hard in the classroom. I know that there were many pedagogical issues with that lesson, as with many of my lessons, but I was proud when one of my students who does not normally pay attention or care about social studies came up to me after class to tell me that for the first time, she was interested in history and what we were talking about in class. That’s been the high point of my practicum so far, beyond anything having to do with what I’ve been graded on, I’m always going to be happy that for at least that one lesson, I got someone to care. Hopefully through the last five weeks of practicum I’ll be able to dot hat more consistently.