03/15/15

Walk the Plank

This is a 2 by 4:

This piece of lumber gets its name from the dimensions of its face (2 inches by 4 inches).  2 by 4s vary by length and are popular due to their versatility and strength.  For the purposes of this thought exercise, imagine you have at your disposal a 20 yard-long (~7metre long) 2 by 4 graded at C40 (also called glulam, these GLUED and LAMINATED pieces of lumber possess strength comparable to steel); rest assured, it will not be breaking anytime soon.

Now that I confirmed your knowledge of 2 by 4s, I will lead you on a mental journey — a virtual experiment, if you will.  Form this piece of lumber in your head, rotate it around a few times, try your best to snap it in half with your mental muscles.  If it is indeed graded at C40, it should at most bend slightly in response to your immense mental powers, but should hold true.  If you’ve succeeded in breaking the 2 by 4, congratulations!  Create another and try again — you want a really sturdy 2 by 4 before you continue!  We shall begin once you have your very own 2 by 4 that will not bend nor break and will reliably hold your weight.  From here on out, keep one rule in mind:  Honesty is the Best Policy.  After experiencing each scene, you will be asked a question.  Keep track of the answers to the questions that come ahead. Continue reading →

07/22/15

On gifts and reciprocity

testEnd of the practicum is nearing — all late and missing assignments have been handed in and marked, letter grades have been finalized and crunch time was finally over.  Before parting ways with the class, I decided to leave behind a gift for each student.  I had three main objectives:

  • Thanking the student for their hard work, and perhaps offer feedback regarding their progress throughout the year
  • Recognize and acknowledge the bond we had developed together
  • Attempt to communicate how much I valued our relationship through heartfelt comments or suggestions

Some cards were easier than others to write:  some students made obvious improvements, others overcame huge obstacles; yet others opened up and shared.  For some, it was difficult to find the right words; for others, my emotions bubbled very close to the surface.

The large card on the left is the only card I wrote that took up both inside pages.  I wrote it for a student in my class with whom I truly connected; and because I felt that I shared a bond with him, it was all the more frustrating as I watched him consistently prioritize everything else in his life over completing school work.  As time wore on, the small pile of homework became a hill, and the hill eventually became a mountain.  Everybody involved ran the full gamut of emotions, and then some.

Most days began with a pleasant conversation.  Two days before Friday, the last day of my practicum, he came to me with mixed emotions.  He told me that he wouldn’t be at school on Friday because his football team would be playing an important provincial-level match.  He’s deeply passionate about football — he always chose football practice over his homework — and there was much pride and excitement in his voice as he told me.  And then, the kicker… he’s sad that he would be missing my last day.  (I later realized that he was involved in planning my surprise party, became very dejected at the fact that he had to miss it, and gave it his all to resist the temptation to spoil the surprise [he succeeded!])

This student was a handful.  He was brutally honest — he would respond to homework reminders with “I have football practice tonight, so I’ll only have half an hour… I might be able to do one of those”.  This student knew what he want, followed his passion, and chose to stand up for himself time and time again in the face of dire, undesirable consequences.  He missed both of the field trips I planned for the class due to incomplete homework; he (understandably) expressed much displeasure, but completed a significant portion of his late assignments on both occasions.  On so many occasions I wanted to slap him on the back and tell him, “good job!”  With him, I walked the fine line between encouraging and redirecting, facilitating and teaching.

painting

This was one of several gifts that I received from my school advisor and the class.  Why does it mean so much to me?

  • The students decided to graphically represent the topics that they liked the most
  • Through their expression, they clearly demonstrated evidence of learning

An informal self-reported poll revealed that the majority of the class liked Science the most; most of them cited the hands-on experiments as the main reason.  The cactus in particular made me extremely happy, because most of the class were bored to tears when it came time to tackle the Desert portion of the tasks.  The colour wheel in the top right was the icing on the cake!

This coincidental exchange of gifts confirmed the importance of strong, caring relationships.  Believing children to be appreciative of all the work I put in helps me give my all; confirming students’ appreciation through their heartfelt tokens of appreciation enhance my resilience tenfold and inspires me to surpass my efforts with the next group of students.

07/9/15

Article-sharing

Coulter, D. et al.  A Question of Judgment:  A Response to Standards for the Education, Competence and Professional Conduct of Educators in British Columbia.  Educational Insights, 11(3).

This reading resonated strongly with my pedagogical approach — there seems to be a very strong emphasis on meeting prescribed learning outcomes.  While I agree that they are important (they represent requisite knowledge that students will need to call upon in order to move on to engage with more complex topics), I feel that the manner in which they are introduced is of fundamental importance.  Learning ought to be relevant and purposeful:  as educators, we need to consider HOW to teach WHAT needs to be taught, and in doing so, must also take into account to WHOM we are teaching and within WHICH CONTEXT.

Harveen:  Tony, I really liked how you presented this article to the group. I agree that as an educator that all students learn differently. If a student is not able to learn one way then as an educator we need to change the way we teach and adapt to all student’s learning styles.

Sharon:  Tony, thanks for sharing!  I see your passion about this article.  I agree with you that the main goal of teachers should be to teach students what they need.  Of course as teachers we are required to adhere to the PLO’s but I agree that we can teach in a way that relates to the students’.  As a teacher we need to get out of our comfort zone if needed so to teach in a way that benefit the students.

06/27/15

The CFE Experience – Final Week

To begin this week’s entry, I’d like to quote an excerpt of Closing Time, by Semisonic — “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”.  That line pretty much sums up what I felt going through this week.  Endings always feel somewhat bittersweet; looking forward helps lessen the sting a bit, but sometimes, I like to look back, relive, and reminisce.  And we shall begin that process with this post!

* * *

Our initial plan for this week was to put together a resource package filled to the brim with art, music, and drama resources.  Of course, this plan sounded like it would tide us over until the very end… well, let’s take a look at what we accomplished aside from that goal:

  • Volunteer as an above-ratio staff at one of the Neighbourhood House-run Out of School Care centres from Monday to Thursday
  • Submit a good draft, professional version of the workshops we designed for the SHIFT initiative
  • Help with food prep for the Volunteer Appreciation Day event hosted by the Neighbourhood House on Friday

Our supervisor’s relaxed and detached management strategy helped my colleague and me settle into a natural rhythm and as a result ended up much more relaxed and productive than if we were assigned specific tasks with performance criteria and deadlines.  I think this might make another intriguing inquiry topic — applications of “choice” to assignment design to increase student engagement as well as the quality of their work.  The Social Studies and Science projects I designed for my units during my practicum showed me a shadow of a response.  It only seems natural, since children are growing up in an interconnected and easily accessible society that bombards them constantly with multiple stimuli, each offering choices that compete for limited resources (time, energy, even patience!).

Volunteering at the Neighbourhood House was an eye-opening experience.  I particularly appreciated the opportunity to work together with a colleague from a different cohort.  Granted, we could have easily chosen to work by ourselves on different projects (we had plenty to choose from) — as luck would have it, my colleague and I got along quite well, we interested in similar things, and both wanted to work together.  Hopefully other students going through the CFE experience benefit from a synergistic partnership!

Also, I found the pacing to be rather nice — I am very thankful that the CFE experience came after our extended practica, as I cannot begin to imagine how enjoyable it would have been otherwise.  Furthermore, the experience felt richer with the trials and tribulations of the extended practicum under my belt — I can definitely say that it informed every aspect of my endeavours as a volunteer!

Finally, I am happy to share that the Neighbourhood House is staffed by a team of diligent, hard-working, talented, and appreciative individuals.  They’ve helped my colleague and I felt right at home, inviting us into their world, treating us like human beings as opposed to being a cog in the big machine.  With the dozens of projects happening simultaneously throughout the centre, it would be very easy to think that!  All the children we’ve worked with are very appreciative of the staff and volunteers — it was very reassuring to see that students, while easily distracted and often engaged in their own interest, are still able to take a break to offer a heartfelt “thank-you”.  Let’s hope we can keep that alive for a while longer yet!

06/22/15

The CFE Experience – Week 2

Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of the CFE Experience!  It’s been a busy and hectic week!  Without further ado, let’s jump right into it!

* * *

Good news is that my colleague and I had completed all of our activity planning the week prior; we began the week with a bit of touching-up and fine-tuning our itineraries.  I do have to say that experience as a teacher helped immensely with this process — I’ve experience with planning activities and implementing them from my years at an afterschool care centre, but this time around it went much more smoothly.  Monday saw us on an excursion to a nearby park with a nice wooded area; my colleague and I decided to plan our activities around a Ranger “bootcamp” theme.  Manhunt (a combination of hide and seek and tag) became “endurance and pursuit training”, and camouflage (variation on hide and seek) became “reconnaisance/spy training”; we even prepared some “Ranger in Training” stickers and “Canadian Ranger” buttons!  We were both really excited to see how our activities would take off!

To begin, turnout was rather low due to the original scheduled activity (“Gardening”).  While our supervisor did mention to the students that we would only be watering the plants before partaking in fun activities, a few of the students were turned off by the prospect of “gardening” and chose not to show up.  That particular centre had more older participants, so they had more autonomy… nonetheless, it was a little sad to see such a low turn-out!  I was a little bit worried about how the older students might react towards the “Rangers” theme — on one hand, it might have been a novel idea, but on the other, it could easily be seen as “lame”.  Fortunately, due to our rapport with the students and their enthusiasm for male leaders, all those who were present chose to participate.

The students’ friendly and engaged nature reflected their view of us as “friends” as opposed to be “adult activity leaders”.  They were all really receptive to everything we gave to them, and often engaged us in conversation.  Occasionally their enthusiasm for conversation and socializing translated to additional time spent getting them refocused on the activity at hand; while it could have have quickly turned into rapport-shattering “hey, I’m the teacher, listen to me!” moments, the supervisor had a very strong framework of expectations in place that we readily called on.

As for the actual activities… it was a really hot day and we forgot to mention water bottles!  We had plenty of snacks for before and after the activities, but by the end of the day the students were all really thirsty!  To throw a wrench in things, the supervisor was not expecting a “field trip” to the park — fortunately, she was able to quickly throw together a permission form and because the students lived in the same complex as the care centre, they were able to quickly run home to get the form signed.  Manhunt drained the kids of their energy, but it was generally well-received; a few of the students tired quickly, but my colleague and I transitioned before the novelty of the activity wore off.  Camouflage initially started rather successfully — the child who was first to hide was so successful in choosing his hiding spot that our supervisor was worried he may have strayed out of bounds!  That was one issue that we had not considered in planning… fortunately, the hiding student was well aware of the boundaries my colleague and I defined — he simply found a really good hiding place!  None of us expected him to be lying in the grass, in plain sight, with only a small gathering of branches covering his body!  My supervisor decided to observe the “hider” during the second run.  Our only female student was the first to find the hider the previous round, so she set out to hide… and was so successful that she eluded our our grasps for a good 5 minutes!  At the end of the day, every single student found success and walked away with something they were really proud of.  Success!

The second day was much more challenging — our group of students joined another out of school care group (which was also operated by the Neighbourhood House) for a day of fun in the gym.  We were informed of the challenges that this group would provide, but we never imagined how challenging it would actually be!  There were a few ELLs, with one student not having any knowledge of English at all.  There were quite a few younger students, which made implementing our activities much more difficult.  While our planned activities did not actually fall apart, it was rather difficult to bridge the gap between explaining the expectations and actually running the activity — the older students tried their best to facilitate, but the younger children just wanted to run around and play with their friends!  The good news, however, is that everybody enjoyed themselves at the end of the day, and we walked back to our centre triumphant and in high spirits, albeit slightly more tired than when we left!

The rest of the week consisted of field trips to Southlands Farms.  It was very interesting to see how three different groups of students responded to the programming in VERY different ways.  Thursday threw a wrench into things, since it started raining shortly after our arrival… the students were still very engaged (they actually got to see everything on the farm!) but their enthusiasm was dampened somewhat by the surprisingly wet weather.

While all of this was happening, my colleague and I somehow found time to finalize our initial submission of the “lesson plans” for the workshop project.  I’m very thankful for the chance to work together with him — we converted our different background knowledge, experience, and teaching styles into excellent learning opportunities.  What began as interesting ideas evolved into polished, targeted, and engaging workshops that naturally embedded engaging material into what we wanted them to walk away with.  Our vision of creating a naturally paced and enactive learning experience actually materialized!  We will be spending next week touching up our proposed workshop plans and making them more visually appealing… but the hard work is completed and out of the way!

All in all, the balance between “admin work” and “hands-on work” worked out beautifully.  Next week will be a little bit sad at the end — while it’s been fun, we will need to say our goodbyes to the Neighbourhood House.  To lesson the sting of departure, we will be helping out with the Volunteer Appreciation Day festivities.  It tickles my funnybone to think that volunteers will be facilitating the Volunteer Appreciation Day 🙂

06/13/15

The CFE Experience — Week 1

Good evening, everybody!  And now, for a change of pace!

As part of ongoing teacher education and training, UBC students in the Education program complete an internship with a community partner through the Community Field Experience program.  I was looking forward to this opportunity since it was first mentioned, and after a long and grueling practicum, it was a breath of fresh air.  I was matched up with a Neighbourhood House that was among my top choices, and to be honest, I was not sure what to expect.

* * *

A total of four volunteers were selected to work with the Neighbourhood House — two from the Secondary program, a colleague from the Middle Years program, and me, from the Elementary program.  We haven’t had any communication with the volunteers in the Secondary program and so had little clue what was in store for us…

… but I was blown away by the fast-paced, efficient, and precise manner with which our supervisor led our first on-the-job meeting.  In a phrase, she laid out eight different initiatives the Youth Team were working on, gave my colleague and me a run-down of each project, their goals, their respective timelines, then… let us pick our own projects.  I must admit that I was not expecting that much freedom (surely there was some projects that were higher priority than the others?); granted, she was really pushing for us to contribute to a series of workshops geared towards establishing an anti-violence club at a Vancouver Secondary School, where Grade 10 students will be prepared with the requisite knowledge and skills to advocate positive and respectful communication and relationships to their peers.  My colleague and I were both really enthusiastic about this project and jumped right in, though we both would have wished for an opportunity to deliver at least one of the workshops we put together.  Admittedly, this role was more in line with our natural talents as teachers — planning the workshop for a facilitator was made much easier by our prior experience writing unit and lesson plans.

The other project we chose was to work with their BC Housing team, which provides afterschool care for youth whose families are serviced by BC Housing.  This opportunity was more hands-on and was a lot of fun — we were given opportunities to plan activities for the kids to try, and then… actually run those activities!  The program operates out of 3 different sites, and each program serves children aged 6 – 12.  While I did have prior experience in afterschool care, I didn’t have experience with such a large range!  Fortunately, the person in charge of running those programs was spirited, energetic, and established a very positive environment with each of the groups, which made it extremely easy for my colleague and me to ease into each program.  We quickly realized that the kids were rather used to teenage and adult presence — the BC Housing program benefits a lot from volunteer assistance.  While much of the planning had already been completed, we were given many chances to plan additional activities — we took their field trips and ran with it!  My colleague and I are in the process of setting up a “Ranger Day” to coincide with a field-trip to a park with lots of trees!  Can’t wait!

PS — the activities that I planned so far… didn’t all go so well.  They were generally well-received, but fizzled somewhat near the end, or participating students came across significant challenges that impeded their enjoyment… hopefully next week will turn out better!

05/10/15

Week 6: 2*W

One of the formative assessments I learned about earlier in the year was “Two Stars and a Wish”.  I would like to take a quick breather and look back at the happenings of the past week and spend some time appreciating what I see through the lens of Stars and Wishes.  Perhaps I might like this method of self-reflection:  it’s definitely more structured than my typical stream-of-conscious style!  For now, I shall examine an art lesson that I attempted Friday morning.

* * * * *

A brief introduction:  Draw me a Song — create a visually appealing piece of art using song lyrics as inspiration.  The typography of the lyrics can be modified and incorporated into the illustration.  The plan was for the students to be inspired and create magic with oil pastels (they’ve been using pencil crayons for the longest time).  Well… that’s not what happened:

  • The Wi-Fi was extremely slow (Murphy’s Law at its finest)
    • Fortunately, I had pre-downloaded a Somewhere Over the Rainbow YouTube video (with lyrics) onto my laptop the night prior (foreseeing something like this)
    • So far so good — I showed the students the examples and they were quite intriqued
  • All right, kids… pick your own songs, write the lyrics down!
    • … *record scratch*
    • PROBLEM #1 — many students did not even remember the name of the song they wanted to use, much less the lyrics
    • PROBLEM #2 – many students could not think of a song to use and were stuck… that lead to
      • PROBLEM #3 – I suggested they try with a “nursery rhyme”, which the students balked at… I had one student choose the ABCs, albeit with a exasperated smile on her face
  • All this culminated in kids losing direction, losing focus, and becoming distracted and off-task… I tried to rein them back in, but it was too late — they lost half an hour, and even then, it wasn’t a solid 40 minutes spent working:  I had to constantly quiet the room down and send kids back to their seats
    • Question to self — why do you keep pacing around the room?  It doesn’t really serve a purpose — maybe the kids would be more on-task if they didn’t have to worry about a teacher peering over their shoulder all the time…

OKAY!  Now we’re ready for 2 stars and a wish

STAR #1 – STRONG START

  • We can say that I had the students’ attention.  I lost them temporarily when I allowed some of them to sing along with the song, but they came back when I showed the samples
    • A side note — I opened myself up for randomness when I allowed singing… that gave a few of the students to “take advantage” and exhibit some off-task, silly behaviour.  Shouldn’t give them those opportunities..

STAR #2 – VISIBLE PRESENCE

  • While the students did get energetic and certain individuals began visiting their friends across the room, they all listened whenever I called for quiet
    • Room for improvement — instead of requesting compliance, demanding compliance; I’m too lenient and permissive and need to hold them to higher standards

WISH – BETTER PLANNING

  • I’ll be first to admit that this is one aspect of my teaching that I’m finding quite a few issues with.  A lot of the time I have these ideas, but neglect to consider how they will pan out.  I am very good at accounting for technological issues… I need to take that transferable skill and apply it to the more important “issues” — how to proactively reduce off-task behaviour and ensure all students develop the skills/knowledge they need to succeed in their assigned task?  Planning, planning, planning…

Moving forward, I tried planning next week’s HACE lesson from this perspective.  I assumed that those rambunctious students will seek to entertain themselves, and that students would get confused and not know how to proceed.  The end result is an airtight activity that is guided from beginning to end… strangely enough, prior to adopting this mindset I had always felt somewhat uncomfortable with too rigid a lesson or activity plan (I wanted to leave room for spontaneity).  Now… it feels so natural — perhaps I needed that change of perspective in order to truly appreciate why certain lessons required stricter frameworks?

I used an analogy to explain the idea to a colleague before… “sometimes, direct instruction is required.  A supervisor will want to tell new employees (at least, initially) exactly what to do and how to do it.  It won’t be until after the new employee has demonstrated some improvement and/or efficiency that the supervisor will begin to release responsibility back to the new employee.  What supervisor would tell their employee to ‘do your best’ without even a basic list of expectations, then chastise him for not performing to par?”

It’s high time I started following my own advice.

05/3/15

Week 3 — Connect-with-a-child day; Week 5 — Eye of the Tiger

This is an old post, to be cross-posted over.  The context was “describe a student you would like to form a better connection with:

* * * * *

Student I want to connect with:  D
In what ways can I connect with the student?
I’ve managed to connect with D in several ways — asking him for feedback, allowing him to speak his mind and share his perspective in each situation.  I’ve noticed that mentioning my expectation and providing him a chance to choose his own way of meeting those expectations seems to help focus him towards focusing his efforts.  Also, he quite enjoys engaging in idle conversation about topics of interest while I am in the vicinity as he is working on a task.
 
What are his learning and social-emotional needs, and how are these met (or not) in the classroom?
I’ve noticed that control, autonomy, and engagement are important motivators for D to do work.  One of the ways his previous social support worker encouraged him to work and refocus whenever he became off-task would be to engage him in idle chatter while he was completing his work.  Occasionally he may become distracted by the conversation, but when redirected, he would acknowledge and agree and refocus shortly.  This, however, is not only difficult to achieve within my classroom (there are several med/high-needs students in my class) but discouraged, as we expect student independence.  Being by his side as would an EA or personal coach/tutor would definitely facilitate improvements in academic performance, but could reinforce his preference for and dependence upon the presence of a facilitator, detracting from his development as a student capable of independent effort.
 
The way I interact with him seems to have struck a chord with him, as he responds well to my suggestions and encouragement.  That being said, in my haste to facilitate his learning, I repeatedly forget that I also want him to develop the ability to work independently.  This is an issue that I feel will be present for quite a while…
* * * * *
It’s fitting that I revisit that bit, written two weeks ago.  It seems like ages ago since I last put down my thoughts regarding D… and it’s safe to say that the honeymoon period has ended with him.  He was heading towards normalcy (his plate was finally about to be cleared after so many weeks of hard work) and then all of a sudden, he was out an entire week with some bug… of all the kids in the class, he’s the one who had the least to gain from getting sick.
By the time he had returned to our class, he had another week’s worth of homework piled on top of what he had already owed.  What little progress he had made had been flushed down the toilet with his sick leave… this time around, we’ve been noticing more defiance, more resignation, more acting out; to the point that the kids around him are starting to get really silly.
And this week had been a rollercoaster, too.  Started off the week with a good perspective check — I’m doing better than I thought I did.  Almost immediately afterwards, making a series of bad decisions that led to a grievous error.  Navigating that culminated in a Social Studies lesson exploding in my face.  Not a pleasant experience at all.  On the bright side, the contents of last week gave me a lot of valuable data for my inquiry project, as I was caught completely unawares and while my guard was down I was completely run over.
Tomorrow is the beginning of a new week… and is definitely a new beginning.  Transition into 80%.  I’ve made it this far with the tireless hard work and bottomless patience from my SA and FA.  Their continued faith in me has inspired me to keep pushing forward through those roadblocks; hopefully I may continue to blow through those blips as they arrive.  Who knows, maybe by the end of this I may end up channeling Mr. Simpson.  How might that look like in this day and age?
04/5/15

Week 1 – Poetry in Motion

Good evening, and welcome to the Weekly Recap show!  I am your host, Mr. Tsang, and I will be discussing the ups and downs — all the juicy highlights — that transpired during the First Week of the extended practicum.  Let’s get started!

* * *

I have to say… I get a sense that I hadn’t truly grasped how much there was to keep in mind until this week.  Sure, I had had an extended 2 week stay at the school at the end of last year, but I was still unexperienced back then — I knew little about assessment, and primarily concerned myself with maintaining a positive (and professional) relationship with the students, practicing good teaching methods, and formulating/implementing lesson plans.  At the time, my SA would assign me some marking tasks to ease me into things…

… and well, everything finally makes sense!  Now I truly grasp the significance of my SA assigning me those marking tasks and asking me to do various tasks, from signing planners and marking spelling assignments to making photocopies.  It took me a while (and quite a few mistakes) before I finally conquered the photocopier, but I digress.  And once the first week started off, I found myself… relatively calm and relaxed.  Sure, each day was filled with a mountain of different tasks — meeting and greeting students as they enter the classroom; checking homework for completion and marking their assignments; planning, touching up, editing, rehashing, and polishing my lesson plans; making photocopies; clarifying instructions; settling disagreements… everything felt natural because my SA has given me plenty of chances to practice prior to the beginning of my extended practicum.  My admiration grows… because THERE’S SO MUCH TO KEEP TABS ON!!!

It’s very exciting, to say the least.  There were a few instances where I felt frustrated and lost, some instances where I felt down… and I found that focusing on my students and asking myself, “what should I do next to get them where I want them to go?” helped me stay grounded, on my feet, and ready to adapt and adjust.  I’m practicing my organizational skills, so let’s separate my comments by headings…

Lessons learned – STAY ORGANIZED.  I know that this is one of the weakest areas of my teaching practice.  The way I make sense of the world around me is somewhat vague and “networked” — reading certain words and phrases call up entire networks of relevant knowledge and information, and as a result, I end up taking a lot of my notes that way.  Teaching has emphasized the importance of being SPECIFIC and GROUNDED — I applaud my SA’s patience with my lesson plans, as often I would write down a phrase when what I envision within my head are 3 bullet points and an explanation or two.  Also, I realize that I am a rather messy person and leave things around all over the place — after a particularly busy day, I realized that the hexagonal table on which I was working (it’s about 1.5-2metres across) was completely filled with papers from several different projects.  Clean as I go, I need to…

Surprises – I very surprised by how hard my students tried to make things work for me.  I’ve seen the class evolve since I first met them in September, but I am still impressed by how attentive they are when I’m standing in front of the class.  I was also surprised that the students who had originally struggled the most have tried the hardest to participate — this is confirmation that affirming and building off their responses will encourage further participation.  Also, I opened up a can of worms during my science stations sessions — by giving the students freedom to work independently, in partners, or as an entire group (within the table groups), I had created the possibility for someone to be left out.  And as Murphy’s Law would suggest, someone indeed had felt left out and I had to get in there to help dispel the situation… while things worked out in the end, unfortunately the affected student was not able to get much done.

A big surprise was that I discovered possible evidence of plagiarism in some work that I had assigned.  After teaching a lesson on figurative language (focusing on similes and metaphors), I learned that a small handful of my students had written down the exact same metaphor.  I had expected some collaborating, but I didn’t expect word-for-word copying… on a hunch, I punched that metaphor into Google and found an online resource (for kids!) that… contained several other metaphors on the students’ papers.  I was a little disheartened to find this… not so much because they had tried to pull a fast one o’er Mr. Tsang, but more the implications of passing off others’ work as their own.  The students don’t realize that the act of handing in someone else’s work implies that their own work isn’t as good.  That thought infuriated me — the students might not be the best in the world in whatever I have them do, but I want them all to be PROUD of their own work!  With my SA’s help, I hope to turn this into a good learning opportunity, as academic dishonesty has very serious implications further down the road.

Things I was happy with – this is always going to be the shortest section.  I was very pleased with how the students remained engaged during the science stations.  I had a few of them come up to me, both during and afterwards, telling me how they really liked the stations.  Also, I was happy with getting some quality 1-on-1 teaching in during the self-directed math program — it’s always great to see those “A-ha!” lightbulbs go off behind the eyes!

Things that need improvement – my social studies lesson… in my opinion, was a complete failure.  I kept the discussion open and as a result ended up losing myself at times.  I ended up talking for >80% of the entire lesson… which was over an hour in length.  Completely unacceptable… I need a lot of work on flow.  Moreover, my lesson plan looked great on paper… but in getting lost, I found that I had completely forgotten about an activity I had planned — an activity that was meant to get the students doing something to give myself time to regroup, as well as to give them a break from listening to me drone on and on.  The lesson plan that I had in my hand… given, I had been concentrating very hard on the clarity of my explanations and instructions (which I think I had done fairly well), but that definitely does not mean I should be neglecting any of the other aspects of teaching a proper lesson.

Also, I found that the science stations were rather difficult for a lot of the students.  I will be going through and refining them… perhaps taking the ‘second’ task and extending it through to the second activity.  For each Extreme Environment I aim to have something hands-on for them to play with, investigate, observe, and make hypotheses from.  Perhaps reducing the overall workload will give the students a better fighting chance?  40 minutes to read pages of information and answer questions is proving to be rather difficult for many of my students… another reminder that my tasks and assignments need to be adjusted to my students’ levels.  Granted, I was trying to do that, but marking the assignments were a good way for me to assess the students’ current levels of achievement.  I’m going to be keeping this in mind.

Things I intend to focus on – as Second Week rolls in, I will be stepping up the organizational side of things:  I will be looking for ways to stay organized (paper-wise) and remain on the look-out for any other tells of students’ learning styles/methods/challenges.  And perhaps start a log book/document where I jot down things I notice, lest I forget.  Also, I will be focusing heavily on lesson flow for any lessons I teach during this week, as I feel that I have done clarity enough justice.  I can rest assured that with my (current) abilities, I will be able to teach without misrepresenting any information the students need to learn!

PS — I am happy to report that the conclusions I arrived at as a result from my inquiry project remain confirmed!  More details on this to come after I have gathered more data and done yet more “reflecting”