April 28th 2015: I would like to create and implement lessons that focus on skills rather than on content. As I carried out my extended practicum in late winter and early spring, I got a handle on teaching grade 8s the content and curriculum (I did the same for grade 11s and 10s in a shorter timeframe). While there were a few instances of projects that required research skills during the extended practicum, my pedagogical approach was mainly focused on imparting the content to the students in an engaging and personalized manner. Thus, I feel that students deserve to be given more training in research projects, document analyses, Harkness table discussions and ethical formulations in the realm of social studies. I have spoken with my social studies community partner and have informed her of my desire to teach those skills. We have planned that I will implement a research assignment on the resolution of the Cold War in the following week in the AP European History classes.
May 1st 2015: As I am planning to teach German as well as social studies, I have spoken with my other community partner – the German teacher, Tanya Peters – and we have planned that I will carry out some lessons with TPR (total physical response). I have taught English as an Additional Language for a few years, but I have never committed myself to a pedagogy that is based on TPR in an effective way. My community partner, Tanya Peters, seems very proficient in the use of TPR as a tool for teaching beginning German, so I will consult with her on how I can effectively implement that approach to teach the beginning levels effectively.

May 4th 2015: I taught the first block of the AP European History class. I divided the lesson into three simplistic parts: an engaging hook, a slideshow presentation, and some time for preliminary research. The objectives of the lesson were for students to be able to explain the processes that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and for students to improve their abilities at creating theses to the topics that they are interested in. The students achieved the first objective only slightly since the explanation of the causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union are complex and hotly debated. Nevertheless, the students had somewhat of a grapple on the political developments that took place throughout the 1980s by the end of the class.
The research that the students were able to undertake was done well. A few of them were excited about the prospect of creating a project and two of them inquired about the possibility of working as partners so that they could create a video – a project that I have permitted. The students were all able to carry out some level of research, but none of them had a workable thesis by the end of class. They were not given enough time to create theses, but many of them had questions on a topic, the answers to which will yield the theses that they will be able to submit by the end of my stint at this school. I feel as though this project will be done well, and with some level of enthusiasm and personal investment. The students in St. George’s are much more able to engage in self-advocacy and to complete projects on their own than was the case from the students in Eric Hamber (the site of my extended practicum). However, the students in the former school are much less engaged by teacher-led discussions or presentations than those of Eric Hamber.
May 6, 2015: I have spoken with my community partner on the possibility of the students successfully creating the projects that I am hoping they will be able to make. She has informed me that the students have been taking AP exams for the European History class as well as other courses. Therefore, I have come to accept the idea that my expectations of students completing the activity well should not be too high. Nevertheless, I continue to receive largely positive responses from students who are told that they need to complete these projects. So, I am prepared for anything, but I do believe at this point that at the very least a few students will complete this assignment with some level of creativity and critical thinking.
My German teaching began today. It went fairly well, but I failed to implement a lesson that largely operated on TPR. I was successful in using the target language with very little English, and I was able to successfully give most of my instructions in German, but the students did activities that were focused on listening for the pertinent or correct information instead of carrying out a task that was set up for them. They spoke a lot of English, particularly when they were trying to comprehend the meaning of words or if they were unsure about the instructions given for the activities that were assigned. However, they did engage in a short speaking activity in which they identified the familial relationships of the Simpsons family in German, but that was almost all of the German-speaking that they engaged in. Next time I will try to make the students carry out a task in German so that the responses of the German stimuli are more pronounced. It is important to consider that this approach I want to apply may take some time for the students to get used to.

May 12, 2015: I have given some thought to the German class that I am charged with teaching today, and I would like to try to motivate students more effectively by creating a competitive game in which students work in pairs and are charged with memorizing personal information about each other and answering questions that the teacher will ask regarding the partners of the person speaking. The group that gets the most questions correct will win the game. I am setting out to do this because the use of competitive games for the sake of motivating student behavior is a weakness of mine, and I would like to see how well I can implement it when I have made it a focus.
Yesterday, I was lucky enough to teach a Spanish 9 class as I speak intermediate Spanish. I made sure to utilize the TPR methodology in the class. I could have instituted a great personalized activity at the end of the class to reinforce the knowledge of the lesson had there been more time. The objectives of the class were to learn the vocabulary of the family and to use the correct form of Spanish to say dates. The presentation and the guided practice of the material went very well. For the last 15 minutes of class I undertook a TPR activity in which students followed my instructions to point to the member of the family that I was inquiring about and point to the month and the day of the person’s birthday. It went well, but I felt like the objectives met by the students were not functional. Pointing at a date upon command is not something that is done in the real world, so I thought that that was not the ideal lesson to do a TPR activity. Nevertheless, it did work somewhat, so I will find lessons in which I can more effectively teach Spanish with the use of TPR whereby it is a more meaningful and practical activity, like asking for and following directions.
I undertook the German lesson today with the TPRS activity in mind as well as the motivational game. The TPRS activity went well. The students could understand me quite easily as I asked questions that demanded an answer, and they were able to respond promptly. The students did speak a lot of English though. There were few instances of them using the target language to answer my questions. Sometimes they were able to use German, but it would only serve as a one-word answer. I wonder if they are too young to be able to handle quick sentence-long responses in the target language. The motivational game though did not work as well as I had hoped. The students carried out the activity, but unfortunately, I did not leave enough time for us to go over the responses to see who had won the game. Thus, the concept of a competition did not drive the performance of the students very much: they got prepared for the performance but they did not get a chance to carry it out. All in all, I thought that the lesson was good, but largely due to the students’ motivation and not because of my great planning or execution.