Why Am I blogging?: Weekly Critical Reflection

My First Practicum Day

This is the first day to visit the school. I am assigned in Year 1. I was a bit anxious because I do not know what to expect on the first day. I was totally relieved to find an adorable teacher who is very accommodating and seemed really helpful in making me understand the children.

The class started with a warm-up through recollection of the previous day lesson and classroom rules. The teacher encourage the children to participate in the discussion by putting the name of an active child on the board with a smiley picture attached to it. They then started the lesson by reading a book then they were given worksheets to make sentences with words discussed the day before. While other children were doing the activity, there were others who were called to sit in a reading group and three other children (those who cannot speak and read English well) were reading with the ESL teacher.

For Math activity, Students were asked to form a circle and each student took a turn throw the dice and double the number in the dice. For variation, the students were paired and whoever doubles the number first wins. The children were very excited to do their turns and be the winner for the round.

Scripture was held in the library, they watched a film and discussed the story at the end of the movie. Checking understanding of film, TV or video are especially useful for developing and enriching knowledge, skills, and attitudes (Book of Reading, p.170). Thus, the teacher asked an open-ended questions to follow through.

"A clear teacher is one who presents information that make it easy for students to understand" (Book of Reading, p. 134). The clarity on what the teacher do to bring about learner to understand (Book of Reading, p. 134) was evident when she was giving instructions for the activities and was explaining the process the whole time to the children. It was apparent that that the indicators for presenting a cognitive clarity were met. The teacher answered students' questions adequately which led to a a well-informed, well-guided , student-centered learning.

2nd Practicum Day

On the second day of my week-prac visit, I was able to mingle with the students while they were doing their activities. My colleague teacher gave me permission to be around the children as they are already familiar with me from the previous week.

While I was checking the students, walking around from table to table, there were 2 students who got my attention on this particular day. They can be categorized in 2 of the Dreinku's model. According to the model, student behaviour was aimed at one of four outcomes which are Attention seeking, Power, Revenge, and Escape (Book of Reading p. 187). The first student falls in Power outcome where "power was sought through arguing, being uncooperative, defiant, stubborn, rebellious, and contradicting the teacher" (book of Reading p.187). This student constantly argued with his peers and was very uncooperative in doing the table/group activity. When the teacher told him to do and participate in the task, he contradicted the instruction by telling his classmates to stop working. He was particularly defiant when he started arguing again and started making faces and laughing until he was sent by the teacher to the time- out zone.

The other student fell in the attention seeking outcome where the sign manifests " showing-off or clowning around" (book of reading Reading p.187). This student was overtly active. During the time when they were sitting on the floor for class discussion, he was raising his hands all the time even if there was no questions asked by the teacher. in the activity table, he kept on telling his partner he was cheating on the game and he would constantly go to the teacher and tell her he won. He would go around to the other table s and stops other children from doing their activities to tell them he won on the pairing game and told them nobody can beat him in any kind of game.

The teacher effectively responded to the above mentioned behaviours. For the attention seeking student, she ignored him at first and when he started yelling and distracting other children about his winning issue, the Teacher asked him to go back in his seat and encouraged him to play again. The teacher acknowledged him eventually by telling him "good job" when he was sitting back in his chair and playing with his partner again. At that time, he stopped going around and just continued on playing the game without arguments.

3rd Week Practicum

On this day, I was able to read to the class a story about bears.i was asked by my colleague teacher to choose a book after their lunch.I tried my best to set the rule to the class while I was reading and questioning. The child will only be called if he/she raises her/his hand quietly, no calling out, and they should all be listening attentively without disturbing other children. As it was my first time to handle the class, the children were a bit testy and pushy on what they can and cannot do.During the reading time, some were still chatting and some were arguing and disturbed some children who were eagerly listening, so I had to stop reading and call out the names of the students who were uncooperative and asked them if they want their name to be put up to the sad and angry face (originally, all the students names are in the smiley face at the bottom page of the emotion chart and the names are being moved up when they were given warning and still they are disobedient). The children then settled and participated. That particular classroom strategy was effective as I saw them behaved and listened. I got a positive feedback from my colleague teacher after the session about that classroom management style.

One thing I realized when I was doing the reading part, the questioning process did not follow Bloom's Taxonomy which consist of Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation. Most of my questions to the students fell in the knowledge category. "Teacher spend a considerable amount of time planning and asking questions and responding to answers, effective questioning and responding to answers are two of the most difficult skills in teaching" (Book of Reading, P.160) Since I was just told few minutes before the reading session, I was not able to check on the book itself and was not able to plan for rich questions that should have been used to aid and check students' application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Though in asking questions, I did it in an encouraging manner. "In order to encourage answers, it is essential that you appear interested and ask your question in a brisk, warm and friendly manner" (Book of Reading, P. 162). In this way, student will feel more relaxed and confident in giving out answers as well as help them think about the questions critically and answer positively.

The next time that I will be reading to the class, I will choose ahead the book to read and plan carefully questions that will lead to a higher order of thinking.

Week 4 Practicum

When I first arrived in the morning, I was assigned to lead the class after recess. It meant that I had to read to the class during the meeting time and explain to them the activity that they needed to do in Math.

I was able to to get a hold of the book that my colleague teacher chose and was able to read it. Since I had the time, I was bale to think of a strategic classroom management that motivated the children to be well- engaged in the class discussion and questioning. I followed Bloom's Taxonomy as best as I could and tried to ask questions which related students' feelings about the book that we read. My questioning somehow reached the evaluation stage which I believe is better as compared to my previous questioning in our last reading session.

I adopted the most common procedure for responding to questions. the steps include; ask the questions, say 'hands up', pause, select the answer from a student with his/her hand up, if there is a call out ignore it, pause, listen to the answer, comment and praise (Book of Reading p. 161).

The reading session worked quite well. Students were aware of what I expected from them. They were briefed and asked to form class rules and they adhered to the rules since they were the ones who were empowered to form them.

Math activity went a bit out of hand though. They played group of ten in a pair. They had to roll the dice and write down the number on the dice that sum up to ten. The difficulty that I encountered with this was when I was assisting other children, some some who were not happy with their pairs went to other pairs and tried to swap partners. There were actually few children who stopped playing because they wanted to change partners although it was already explained previously the importance the sharing and working with pairs. It did not work out as much as I wanted it to. So, I called everyone's attention and talked about the rules that they made before doing the activity. I complimented those who were working togethere cooperatively and gave them a 'good job' stickers. This somehow put us all back on track.

Week 5 Practicum

This day, I covered the second part of the class activity. I was the teacher-in-charge. I started after lunch and taught about Math. I also did the reading activity in small groups.

According to the group management stated in the Book of Reading in page 185, the group needs to be organized to facilitate; regular participation by each member rather than everyone waiting for one member to perform, accountability by all students within the group, and maximum attention by each member of the group. All the students in the small group were told to read together. When some of them finish ahead, they had to stop before they go to the next page so they could all read together at the same time. This helped other students who had difficulty in reading some big words. They tried to listen and imitate other children on how the words were pronounced. This was a good exercise for the children to participate in the task. After the reading time, they were given chances to tell back the story and interpret the things that they read and relate it to their own experience.

There were five different sets of activities for Math including; pair of ten with a dice, pair of ten with the number card, board game, card game and monopoly. Each group will play in a particular set then would move in to another set. They were basically moving to each table with a different activity according to the teacher's instruction.

The children went to the scripture class which was held in the library. After the scripture, we did a class practice for the cowboy dance presentation and the children had fun during the dancing time.

References:
Australian Catholic University. (2010). EDFD 589: Effective teaching and professional practice: Unit outline. School of Education: Mount Saint Mary Campus.Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrant. On the Horizon. 9 (5)
Barry, K & King, l. (19980. Developing instructional skills. In Beginning Teaching and Beyond, (3^rd ed.), Social Science Press.ts. On the Horizon.

http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au
http://curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au
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