Educators implement effective planning, instruction, assessment and reporting practices to create respectful, inclusive environments for student learning development.
One of my main goals over the course of my first practicum had been to work on my planning and time management.
I know that I am someone who struggles with effective planning, and being given a lot of time at the beginning of practicum had been a blessing, but later a curse. I had been given a couple do weeks to plan prior to starting our first practicum, as we had found out our placements very early this time. The problem that I had at one point was that my CT (coaching teacher) had ended up changing his mind on what he had wanted me to work on with the students, which had caused a lot of the work I had done up to that point.
The last few days leading up to the practicum had ended up being a struggle for me and it took a lot time and focus in order to feel somewhat prepared going into the practicum.
Over the course of the practicum, lesson planning and marking took up a lot of my time. I had not done either of these things for students before and I wanted to be able to do my best work for both myself and my students. Both lesson planning and feedback are instrumental in student learning. Lesson planning as it sets you, the teacher, up for success in giving a good lesson that engages students, and feedback as it is students (hopefully) reflect on the work that they had done.
Over the course of my practicum I had done both lessons that had taken maybe 30 minutes to come up with, plan, and create necessary documents and worksheets, but I had also done lessons that took hours to prepare and get ready for students. In both instances, there had been a variety of student engagement and interest. I did find that the activities that had been more hands on had more student interest, along with the ones that had been slightly creative. Students often also did not want to do worksheets, especially if it was the second day in a row of doing them.
Students in this class had also been somewhat vocal about if they had liked something or not, which is something that I am VERY grateful for.
Creating an inclusive environment for students hadn’t been the hard part of this standard for me. My class had not needed a lot of differentiation, but I had really tried to connect with my CT and the EA that was in the classroom to make sure that everything was on the right track, and often they would say that there was nothing to be concerned about.