Week 2:
Every day of the week, the students spend the first half hour of the day doing BOKS (building our kids success), where they get to be physically active for around 30 minutes so they burn off some energy at the start of the day. Sometimes they spend BOKs outside and sometimes they do it in the gym. This past Wednesday morning, they spent it in the gym and the teachers started them off doing some exercises to warm up. This included running, high knees, butt kickers, bear crawls etc. When this was over, they were introduced to a game which had them find partners and label one of them as “A” and the other as “B”. Whichever letter was called out was considered “it” and they were to chase the other letter to see if they could catch them within 5 seconds. If the one partner was tagged, they did 5 squats and if they were not tagged, then the “it” partner had to do 5 squats. For this game, the students were explicitly told not to run and only to walk while they were chasing/being chased. After one round, they already had to be told not to run again and during the second round, two boys had been running and they collided. This resulted in the both of them being injured and one of them actually needing to go to the hospital and received six stitches above his eye brow. After the collision, the rest of the students were told to leave the gym and return to their classrooms.
This experience was truly eye opening for multiple reasons. The teachers gave the students specific instructions at the beginning with another reminder and many of the students were still running which resulted in the injury. I realized that many children will still do what they want and not realize the reasons for why teachers give certain instructions. There were also three classes all in the gym together so I saw that it was much harder to manage a larger number of students than the typical number of students in a class. The environment was more chaotic than a normal gym class so I learnt that incidents like this can more likely happen with more students all together. As well, after the incident happened, the teachers were quick to get the other students out of the gym and back to their class. I got to witness how efficient their method was in getting the other students under control in an event where other students were injured. As the students are still at a young age, they were very high energy after the incident and had many questions. The teachers made sure to calm them down as much as possible by telling them that the two students would be okay. After all the students and teacher came back to the classroom, the teacher gave the students a lecture on why certain rules are in place. The TM used it as a teaching lesson to as why they were told not to run so it was great lesson to witness that normally would not be in the daily routine.
I will be able to apply my new learning from this experience in many different aspects during my practicum and future classroom teaching. I saw how hard it is to make sure a large group of students are following the proper safety rules for a game so I probably would not play a running game with so many students in a small area. I will make sure that the students know what can happen if some rules are not followed and that injuries can always happen when people are not paying attention. I know to keep children as calm as possible during an injury or any type of rare event that might throw the students off of their daily routine. I know a little bit on how teachers assess an injured student and the steps that need to be taken. Many of the other students were good friends with the one student in my class that got stitches and they all wanted to know how he was doing through the day. One of the CEAs in the school had received a picture of him with his stitches and was able to share with the students and they were happy to see that besides the stitches, he was okay. I learnt how much the students care for another and how important it is to foster those relationships in a classroom.
Week 4
The past couple weeks, the teacher in my classroom has started to do a “circle of trust” right after lunch every day. All of the desks are moved to the sides of the room and all of the students and the teacher bring a chair into the middle to make a circle. My partner and I also participate on the days that we are there as well. In this circle, everyone gets the chance to pick and emotion/emotions and explain why they feel that way on that particular day. When someone is talking, everyone else must be quiet in the circle so that they feel heard and respected. A bulk of the children usually say they are happy or excited for various reasons while others sometimes say they are feeling neutral. I was surprised though how many students felt vulnerable enough to share their emotions of feeling sad, lonely or angry. Many of the students feel some type of way because of school and their friends but some because of their home life as well. In this past week’s circle of trust, there is one boy who said that he was stressed because of some things that were happening at home. He did not elaborate on the specific things that made him feel stressed but it had obviously affected him enough to share with the class.
Through these circles of trust, I learnt how important it is to let students express how they feel in a safe place where there is no judgment. They can say as little or as much as they want to with no repercussions. With respect to the boy’s response of feeling stressed because of home life, I learnt how much issues from home come to school with the students every day. I realized that sometimes these students try to cover up their problems even though it affects them day to day in the classroom. It is important to understand that the students that enter the school every day not always come from a positive home environment. Sometimes, the school is their place where they feel the most comfortable because going home after isn’t always the happiest place for them. I learnt that even at the age of 9/10 years old, students are able to identify the roots of how they feel in a very mature way. It added some perspective for me on why some students, especially this boy, act a certain in a classroom. He does not purposely misbehave because he feels like it but because he may be trying to release some of the stress that he is feeling from home and he does not always know how to regulate himself. This activity made me aware how important it is sometimes just to be a listener for students even if you have nothing to say back, it is important they know they feel heard. I saw how it allows them to have a weight lifted off of their shoulders just getting their feelings out in the open.
I really love the circle of trust implementation in the classroom. All of the students always have something to say in the circle and creates a very supportive environment. I hope to implement this same supportive strategy in the future so that my students feel comfortable expressing themselves. It is important to create solid relationships with the students one on one as well as a whole class group so that it is easier to know what is going on in their lives. In the future, when I am teaching, I now know to think that there may be other reasons why students are misbehaving instead of thinking it is just because they feel like it. I hope to take the time to create positive relationships with students so they always feel supported at school even if they are not at home. If students feel stressed at home, I do not want to create more stress for them at school. I want to make sure that they come into the classroom and try to eliminate their struggles as much as possible. I think it is important to create an open-door policy so that even after students share their feelings in a circle with the rest of the class, they can always come talk to me afterwards if they have anything else they want to share.
Week 6
Stars
Example 1:
I feel that I have made growth in how I teach my lessons based on an understanding of the student’s behavior in my class. I have created meaningful and trusting relationships with many of the students which has allowed me to identify each of their strengths and weaknesses in the classroom. At the beginning, I was unsuccessful in managing many of the students because I had not learned how they behaved during a lesson and the best method to keep them focused. By the end, I feel as though I had developed a stronger and firmer hand than I had at the beginning of practicum. This allowed me to have better classroom management and keep the students working till the very end of my lesson. I was able to take in many of my TMs classroom management strategies and how he organized the classroom, but was also able to adapt certain strategies that best fit my teaching style. There is still lots of growth for me pertaining to this but I feel like this was one of my stars for this practicum.
Example 2:
Through developing my lesson plans, I believe I was able to better my lesson activities and how I taught the material. My first couple lessons, I focused a lot on the lecturing of the subject that I wanted to teach the students and had only one long activity for them to complete independently. I learned quickly that this format did not work very successfully for them and that I had to adjust what I was doing with them during my lesson. This allowed me to plan for more smaller activities and doing some together as a class so it became more collaborative. I was able to better use the “I do it”, “We do it” and the “They do it” method in my lessons. While creating my lessons, I also created them to “level up” the struggling students in the class and was able to challenge the students that thrived more academically. I believe I was able to show growth in the diversity of my lesson plans to accommodate all of the types of learners in my classroom.
Wish
Example 1:
Something I need to work on for my next practicum is creating a stronger and less casual presence in the classroom. I became aware of how much I use “you guys” when I address the students and it is a habit that I am aware I must break. The ways in which I address the students is also in a manner of me asking if they can do something instead of me telling them to do something. In the future, I need to focus on being more of the adult figure and less on using terminology that seems too friendly. This includes telling the students that they must complete a task so they do not have the option of telling me they won’t do a particular task because I put “can you” in the sentence. In my future practicums, I will use “class” and “students” when I address them in my lesson and make sure that I tell them instructions and not ask them. Improving in these areas will allow me to have a firmer presence in my classroom.
Reflection on the practicum reflections
These three reflections are from my practicum experience that I had last semester. Every Wednesday for 7 weeks, I attended a grade 4/5 class and taught four English Language Arts Lessons. This was my first time teaching lessons in the program and we wrote a reflection about our time in the classroom every two weeks. Reading through these reflections, I realized how much I learnt in my short time at this school. It was a wonderful first classroom experience and the staff and students really helped my development throughout the process. These reflections we’re extremely helpful in determining what I was doing well and what I needed to work on in regards to my lessons. It is easy to think that one will remember what worked and what did not but having these reflections readily available allows me to see the specifics. Throughout each practicum day, I was able to from real relationships with the students which then allowed me to grow my confidence when it came to teaching my lessons. This practicum was the beginning of my teaching career and I look forward to looking at these reflections 10 years down the road.