Practicum 2 Reflection

Lesson Delivery: The Hook

The most important lesson that I learned during my second practicum was how to “hook” students in. The delivery of a lesson, especially the initial part, is crucial to student engagement. My first real success hooking students into my lesson was when we “travelled back in time”. In social studies, I was teaching the students about ancient civilizations. But, instead of just pulling up my PowerPoint and talking… I had all the students stand up, and we pretended to climb into our time machines! We buckled our seatbelts and pressed buttons, and then zoomed off into the past! The students absolutely loved the dramatic element to this lesson. After that lesson, I learned to keep things dramatic. We “went underwater” in science. We “had a campfire” in social studies. We “joined the army” in gym class. Everything was brought to life by adding in a make-believe aspect to the lesson. The age of the students (mostly 10 years old) probably impacted their love for drama. Furthermore, each group of students might respond differently to this dramatic lesson delivery. Still, it made me realize how important and impactful the hook of a lesson can be. The lesson content means nothing without an engaging delivery.

Desk Arrangements and Groupwork

During my second practicum, I did a lot of activities that involved re-arranging the desks, and groupwork.

I learned the meticulous process of assigning students to groups. For example, when I had students do ancient civilizations social studies/drama skits, I wanted a leader and a strong reader in each group. I also needed everyone to get along and work well together. One group struggled because they did not have any decisive strong-willed personalities in their group, and no one could make any decisions. For the Smarties graphing lesson, I wanted at least one student who was strong in math in each group to help the other group members. Unfortunately, sometimes the student who is most competent in a particular subject, is not always the most patient or willing to help their classmates. When I allowed students to choose their own groups, they were usually much happier, and sometimes quite productive. However, sometimes, students would get distracted or misbehave when working with their friends. Students also tended to group themselves with other students that had similar strengths and weaknesses as them, which did not lead to very diverse groupings intellectually. When competitive games were played with self-assigned groups, there were clear differences in academic abilities. All of this taught me, as a teacher, when it is appropriate to assign groupings and when to let students choose their own groups. I also learned the advantages and disadvantages of different grouping strategies.

Different lessons required different seating arrangements. This led to many recesses spent re-arranging the desks before the students came back in. (Although, I learned to ask for student volunteers to assist me when needed). During art classes, I found it was helpful to arrange the students into groups of 4 so that they could share the paint. During my underwater lesson, I pushed all the desks to the perimeter of the room and arranged the chairs into a movie-theatre style. This arrangement was designed to make students feel more connected, and to help create the illusion that we were all on a submarine together. It also allowed us to quickly move the chairs out of the way when we wanted to do some active drama games. For ancient civilizations storytelling and legends, I had a similar arrangement where the desks were off to the perimeter of the room and the seats were all arranged in a circle together. This arrangement let us all pretend to be having a campfire together before we acted out the stories. Overall, I learned that desk arrangement depends on the type of lessons planned for that day. It is also important to consider the amount of group-work and collaboration involved in the lesson, and the visibility of screens or whiteboards.

Student Responsibilities and Classroom Routines

Students in Ms. Ly’s classroom had a job board. There were hand-outs people, collectors, students that cleaned the boards and put up the chairs, gym equipment helpers, etc. At first, it took me a little while as a new teacher in the room to learn the established jobs. However, I soon realized how helpful it is to have student jobs. The grade 4/5 students were very eager to help around the classroom and take on some responsibility. A job board simultaneously taught the students to be responsible, improved classroom management, and allowed for more efficient and effective instruction / lesson delivery.

Inclusivity

Ms. Ly always made students feel welcome in her class. She would have students read about other countries during Language class. When there were holidays of other cultures, she would teach about them and do something to celebrate them. For example, the class celebrated Chinese New Year and Ramadan. For the students that were fasting during Ramadan, she made sure that they could all go play games together during lunch. I would like to emulate these strategies in my future classroom, ensuring it is as inclusive and as safe as possible.

Extracurricular Activities

Ms. Ly was the badminton coach during my practicum. She took on this additional role because she loves badminton and wanted to share her passion with students. It was interesting to see how try-outs were held, and how students were chosen for the team. It was neat to see the students improving in their badminton skills and body co-ordination as the season progressed.  I hope to get involved in extra-curricular activities as a teacher.