Reflection on prac…

What a great time I had while on Practicum.  Although I was working 7 days a week, planning lessons, looking for new ideas.  Life was hectic!!! I learnt so much and had a terrific mentor who was willing to help whenever I asked.  I had some successful lessons and some not so successful but those were the ones where I learnt the most.

The saying I take away from my prac is the following “Assume nothing and teach everything”.  I hope this resonates with a lot of fellow uni students.  

I had a glowing prac report and one that I would be happy to give to any prospective employer.  I have been told for my return prac my behaviour management will be challenged further as I had an easy class for behaviour.  This excites me!!!  Bring on August.

My wish…

My wish while I was on practicum was to use an IWB however I was one of the unlucky ones who didn’t have a board in my room.  This is a real shame as I would have enjoyed putting into practice some of the things I have learnt through this course.

Where I am lucky is that I can hopefully use some of the ideas in the school where I work as a teacher aide.  Most of the classes I attend do not use the IWB to its full potential and with some of the ideas I have seen, I may be able to share with my colleagues here at school.

Melissa has highlighted in her blog how I feel about teachers not having enough knowledge of how to use the IWB or enough time to integrate as well as they could.  I think it is important for all teachers to attend any professional experience days on this.  This course has highlighted how important it is to stay on top of technology advances.

WALT, WILF and TIB

The WALT, WILF and TIB was very big at the school I was in.  I had seen it in use but I didn’t really use it in my last practicum.  This time though my mentor was very big on it and it helped me learn a lot about not only planning but also what I need to students to achieve during the lesson.  

WALT – We are learning to

WILF – What I am looking for

TIB – This is because

Initially I struggled with the WILF and the TIB section as I wasn’t explicit enough with what I wanted the students to achieve within the lesson.  By the end of the three weeks I was starting to nail them and this made the lesson progress really well. 

When reading other students blogs it is interesting to see that they had similar experiences to me.  Here is a link to one of my fellow classmates.

Connect.ed…Cyber safety for children

After completing this weeks activity, which was really professional development for teachers.  It has opened my eyes to how dangerous the internet really can be.

The survey was not very helpful as some of the questions highlighted didn’t correlate in my eyes to true answers.

The videos on cyber bullying however were great!!!  They would be something I definitely would use in class to demonstrate how easy it can be.  It would also assist in helping children build resilience against cyber bullying.

All in all a very well designed task for us to complete as pre service teachers.

Theories, Models and Frameworks

A fellow blogger has highlighted here Anouk Matthews her response to theories, models and frameworks.  What grabbed my attention with her blog is that she felt the same as me, that I will never use it, but gee I did use these frameworks during prac, especially when planning my lessons.  I did most of it without even thinking of the frameworks.  So here is my table of theories, models and frameworks.

My version can be found here

 

Difficulty in balancing work, life, prac and uni

Well, we have a day until our final assignment is due and given my feelings right now of anxiety I thought I should blog.  Actually to be honest, I am blogging as I have not blogged over the last 5 weeks as much as I should have.  There a plethora of reasons but the main one is I just get on with the job and don’t write about it.

I will admit I have been running behind with the modules too and I didn’t get my assignment started before prac but that is fine.  We are all different and I am happy enough with where I am given I work 7 days a week in a boarding house with 20 kids all of whom need love and care.

Terrible lesson but lesson learnt….

Oh dear what a lesson!! It wasn’t good 😦

We have moved on to an assessment piece for English. We are only one week into the unit. I hadn’t been given the assessment piece until end of last week and what I taught last week had very little connection to the assessment.

There were sections that I taught, like language features, that gave some scaffolding but not enough (in my opinion) to start an assessment piece.

So here I am Monday first session trying to guide year 4 students through an assessment piece. The response was blank faces, I was floundering, I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I could of danced around like a clown and the kids would still look blankly at me.

I just wanted to change the subject….but I couldn’t. I had to deal with it the best I could.

My lesson learnt was scaffolding is so very important and when in place success is achieved.

2 down one to go

Two weeks of absolute fun! With one week to go…Only two lessons out of 15 did not go so well and that’s cause I assumed the kids knew more than they actually did. Over planned a few lessons and didn’t get through all the content but I’m in a really good place and that’s all that matters.

Deputy watching my lesson on Monday and hopefully I’ve improved since the first week. I need to convince her to have me back. It’s a great school and I’m really enjoying being there.

First day of prac

What a great start to prac! Great mentor, great class, limited ICT in classroom. Three computers and a projector. Not to worry, there are still things I can do with what I have.

The first thing I have noticed is not a lot of group work. The reason for this is behaviour. There are not a lot of trouble kids in the class just a few who get off task quickly and are easily distracted.

Have I learnt all the children’s names? Yes I believe I have. Let’s hope they don’t move today.

First lesson taught – geography. Did it go well? Yes. Would I do it differently next time. Yes. It wasn’t that I wasn’t prepared. It was a lack of understanding how long things take when mapping a country. It was a last minute change to my lesson as I had the children doing research on the countries but that’s ok. Only negative comment, if you can call it that, was it was hard for children to follow from google maps to the map we were using given the zoom in zoom out concept.

All in all a great first day!

Reflection on first 5weeks

As I sit here on Easter Saturday with no family or friends around me I am reflecting on whether all this hard work over such a family/friend orientated break is worth it.  Then wham…I have 12 months to go of study and I will be finally qualified.

What have a learnt?

I have learnt that there is so much out there in the way of ICT that I really need to open my eyes and do some research and not be scared to .  I have created a PLN (personal learning network).  This is working well for me as I can share what I have found but I can also see what others have found and build lasting relationships.

I have signed up for Twitter – although I have not worked out exactly how this works.  I am though determined to keep trying to understand

I have signed up to pinterest – I love this site/app.  I have had so much fun looking through all of the images on there.  I even have a sneaky hideaway page 🙂

I have purchased an iPad and I love it too.  I now have a happy family of MACs.  They are all friends and share everything 🙂

And lastly, I am currently in the process of transferring all the knowledge that I have learnt so far in creating a unit of work which is ICT rich.  This is proving to be more difficult than once thought but that is due to making sure I am sequencing correctly and using ICT to enrich 🙂  

On that I should get back to it…Wish me luck.