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For
the consolidation stage of the practicum, the following goals, and their
achievement were established/accomplished:
My mentor teacher and I decided on a hands-off approach, and we agreed that I would teach 3 units, which by the second week ended up being the majority of the class time. I taught a unit on movement-simple machines, a unit on geometry, and a language arts unit. The hands off approach was fine with me, except that I was a little ambitious as to what the children could understand within such a short period of time. Both the science and math units were cut down to at least half of their original sizes, which while good for having done the planning, was a little disappointing. Some more collaboration with the mentor teacher the next time would perhaps assist me in setting more realistic goals for the class, particularly such a needy one as this. My language arts unit was cut down even more than were the math and science units, perhaps this problem arose because while the math and science expectations are fairly clear, rather it is easier to decide how to plan the unit, language arts is a little more vague, and I found deciding about what to focus on a little difficult. Again, a little more collaboration with my mentor teacher would have been good; though she was more than willing to help, I wanted to try to do everything on my own.
This
was the most difficult part of the practicum, in all subjects, but
particularly in language arts. In such a short period of time, I felt that it
was quite arbitrary to assign some sort of achievement in, for example
geometry, when the child just might have been having a bad day or week. While
this problem can be avoided by taking several pieces of “evidence”, I found
it difficult to feel satisfied that a topic had been thoroughly covered so
that I could move on, yet there lie all of those expectations, and - in order to cover them all - move on is
what I often did. I also found it difficult to assess children because the
class that I was teaching had such high needs: 25 were ESL and there were 7
remedial students. Often lack of written responses didn’t matter as children
would demonstrate in their work or oral responses that they understood what
was going on; in other cases, however, I was unable to watch all of the
students perform all of the activities, and so, again, giving a mark seemed
quite arbitrary at time. When writing a report for each student at the end of
the practicum, I found myself looking at my mark sheets, and disregarding
them for some students, as either their mark looked higher than observation
told me it should have been, or their marks were lower than they should have
been. While some form of hard evidence is needed, I am wondering whether or
not, at least for the primary grades, if anecdotal notes and “general sense”
are sufficient for assessment?
This
was probably the most successful aspect of my units. I collected a variety of
hands-on manipulables, interesting work-sheets, posters, songs, pictures, and
information from the school library, the internet, parents, other teachers,
and resource rooms. Though it was often time-consuming, the variety of type
of material to work with paid off. I would like to improve my use of
technology resources, however. I often felt too busy to have time to explore
the software available at the school, and considering the amount of time
devoted to computers at this school (one 40-min. period every 6 days), it
seemed counterproductive at this time. I am taking a technology course this
semester and hope to make a greater use of technology and computers in the
next practicum.
The
biggest area in which I did some differentiation was in the process of
teaching. I tried to make use of the overhead and the blackboard a lot, for
those students that had difficulty paying attention, and for visual learners.
As well, for ESL and students with reading difficulties, I would often draw
pictures to accompany new vocabulary. I also did some differentiation in assessment.
As I said above, some of the students with writing difficulties often
provided little written evidence of the work they had done, yet through
observation/listening/questioning I was able to tell whether or not they
understood the concepts under study. Some of my best students in science, for
example, barely wrote a word, yet I knew they understood. |