One down, one to go....

I just finished my practicum in New Liskeard. I drove 8 hours back to Kingston, and am about to start a 16 hour drive to Mingan, Quebec. It's feeling a bit crazy to be going so far for such a short time. I guess I chose these placement locations, and it's not as if I'm going to another continent like some people, but it's still hard to justify it.

Part of why I'm feeling frustrated is that I felt like I was just settling into some parts of my placement in New Liskeard. I spent last week, and Monday and Tuesday of this week, with a SPH3U class. I observed until last Thursday, and then taught 3 lessons. Since I was jumping into the middle of a unit, and Shane, the teacher I was shadowing, posts a lot of material on the website in advance, I felt like I should just follow his plan, and not change things around too much. I ended up teaching lessons that I wasn't too happy with, because they were Shane's lessons, and not mine. It felt a little silly to be going through examples in a powerpoint that Shane knew much better than me.

It did end up being an interesting experience for both of us though. Sitting at the back of the class observing, Shane was able to analyze his own teaching material in a way that he couldn't have otherwise. We talked at the end of the class about what he wanted to change for the next time he taught that lesson.

There is also a lot that I was able to learn even while doing a lesson that was mostly prepared by someone else. I thought a lot about how to take up homework. Shane will often pass out whiteboards to small groups, and have them write out solutions to problems, and then present them to each other. I decided to take up some homework problems myself on the board, but then last minute decided it would be better to include the students, and brought two students up to write solutions on the board. I remember doing this in high school, but this really convinced me that it doesn't work. Most of the class is just sitting there, those two students were under a lot of pressure, and I'm just standing there while hoping they don't put up something completely wrong or confusing. I thought through all this as I stood there, and then stopped it, and brought out the whiteboards. I felt like everyone breathed a sigh of relief. It took the pressure off, got everyone engaged, and allowed me to move around the class and give one on one help while getting an idea of what the presentations of solutions were going to look like. Not sure if there are any peel procedures specifically about small group work with whiteboards, but I've found them really effective.

One more thing that I really took out of this class (there were a bunch, but these are the big ideas), was managing the class to create time for yourself as a teacher. Students working through things on their own for part of the lesson is effective for them, but I felt like it also allows a teacher to be more effective in other ways. When something is not quite going the way you want, or you are having a hard time explaining something, if you are able to get students to work through something on their own, it gives you time to think through what you want to say next, or what direction you want to go in. It's also really important in creating time to talk to some students one on one.

I learned a lot from this class, but I'm really left with the feeling that I could have gotten so much more out of spending an extended period of time with them. Jumping around from class to class, as I've been doing all year, has given me a taste of what it's like to be a teacher, and a lot of ideas, but I don't really feel like I've gotten the practise time that I'd like. If teacher's college goes to two years, I'd really like to see that include a lot more time in classrooms, and longer practicums. I think there could be a lot of benefit to a whole year being devoted to practicum, in one or two schools. I could see it being a huge opportunity for host teachers to get a chance to partner teach for a year, and would give TC's some really good experience.

Enjoy your travels, see you in April,

Jamie

Getting the most out of my placement

I'm now halfway through my placement in New Liskeard, and wondering what I'll be doing for the next two weeks. The 4 credit focus program I've been working with is putting together a magazine that gets published every year. At this stage, students are setting up and conducting interviews, and getting advertisements for the magazine. This means they are outside of the school working on their own in groups of 2 or 3, and there isn't really any teaching going on.

Working with this group has been challenging. The magazine and the program (called TERRA or Teaching Ecological Responsibility Recreation and Adventure) are all about birds, and bird banding in the area. This is something that is completely new to me, and while I am learning a lot, I don't feel able to contribute much to the class. I have also found the lack of structure in the class difficult. Since it is a 4 credit program, the same students are with us all day, and the whole day sort of melts together, and doesn't seem to have a lot of planning. I am surprised at my frustration with this, since most of the outdoor education settings I have worked in have followed a similarly unstructured approach. Maybe it is because I feel that unstructured time in the outdoors is really valuable, but getting similar value out of less structured time in the classroom requires more careful planning.

On Wednesday, a teacher with an SPH3U class came to my associate and I, and asked if we had some team building exercises we could share with his physics class. There was another volunteer in the TERRA program that day, Luke, and he and I agreed to help out the next day. We went in on Thursday, and played some team building games (also called "initiatives") with the class. It was really interesting, and made me think that it would be nice to take the time to do that in any physics or math class. In fact, we played a name game at the start, and the next day the teacher told me that the students realized they didn't know each others names after almost 3 weeks in a class together (a class of about 17).

I went back into that class on Friday, and observed the physics lesson. They are in a unit on mechanics, and it turns out the teacher is doing some pretty interesting stuff with them. He's really into doing more engaging, concept based teaching. I'm planning on spending the next two weeks in his class, and I'm really excited about sharing some of what we've been learning about this year. I'll write another blog once I've spent a bit more time in his class.

This placement hasn't really been what I've expected, but I guess that's often the way it is with learning. I'm trying to be open to whatever experiences end up coming my way.

Jamie

Getting Back Into the Swing of Things

This has been a pretty tough week for me. I just want to share some of my feelings on classes.

It's difficult after more than a month away to jump back into classes and assignments that I have a varying amount of interest in. I think it's especially challenging for me, because I'm going into an outdoors placement in February, and I've finished all of my math and physics placements. Additionally, I don't know when, if ever, I'll be working in a classroom. It's difficult to write assignments when I don't have a plan of when I would put it into use.

So why am I so excited for our physics class? I'm not always fully present with what we're doing (I have always struggled to sit still in classrooms - the break, and time for chatting really helps me). But right now this class stands out as the one I'm really happy to get up and go to in the mornings (even though it's at 830). I think that a lot of it is just feeling like we're being treated with respect, and like there's been a lot of thought put into spending our class time doing things that we see value in. I

Another part of it is that I've been really excited about learning physics this year. I have realized that there are a lot of concepts that I don't quite understand, or couldn't explain. I can see some of the gaps in how I was taught physics, and it makes me want to be part of changing that.

Lastly, I feel that when I have an interest I want to pursue in this class, I have the freedom, and your encouragement to do so.

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I'm really happy with my unit choice for the unit planning assignment for this class. I'm doing grade 9 electricity, which is the unit that I taught in December. I felt that since I won't be back in a physics class this year, it makes a lot of sense to work on a unit that I've already taught, and have a lot of ideas of things I would keep or change. Honestly, I don't think I'd keep much from that class, but I feel like that still gives me a lot of direction and focus in this project.
One idea someone mentioned to me is having students do the wiring for a cardboard box model house. They saw students who were incredibly engaged in that project, and I could see it fitting in pretty well with the goals I have in mind. I'm interested in looking into this idea more with Siobhain (my partner for the project).

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 I really like the new google site you put up....seems really clear and straightforward. Any way you can enable comments? It would be interesting if it could allow discussions on what you post.

Thanks,

Jamie

Planning ahead

Hi Jay,

Sorry to be slow in replying. This holiday period is always an interesting mix of family, friends, trying to catch up, and trying to keep up. As usual, I'm struggling!

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings (in the season of tidings of joy) but there never will be a most effective method. SO much depends on the mix of students you get and what their previous experiences have been. And what you see as possible and desirable will also change over time. It's a great adventure!

I'm very pleased to hear that you started teaching on Day 1 and that you were asked to plan ahead and saw the benefits of doing so. It's easy to fall back on day by day planning--as students, we rarely get any insights into what our teachers do in terms of planning, because they never tell us.

I'd be interested in hearing more about the self-guided instruction with the Grade 9 class, and of course I'm very glad that you got to try something and that it seemed to work. Was it your idea or did your associate teacher suggest it? Did it take the students time to adjust?

Thanks for the update, see you early on Monday!
Tom

GREAT analysis

Hi Jamie,

A couple of blogs came in before yours but I have to reply to yours right away. VERY impressive analysis of the situation. I really think that your focus on how much energy 1 kWh is has real potential, and I hope you'll remind me to ask you to show it to the class. I expect some of them will find the exercise informative.

"Transferring knowledge" has always been tricky. I think your students' reactions are entirely the result of your associate's practices--copying information won't work. I think that fill in the blanks has potential, perhaps particularly if you leave LOTS of blanks! I wonder if, after each sentence with blanks is complete, it would be productive to ask "OK what does that sentence really mean?"

I wonder if it's possible to do a variation on the Nonsense notes you copied in class. Write out a paragraph of notes with double spacing. Put at the top "some of this information is correct but some of it is wrong--do not study from this page until you have made all necessary corrections." Then either get them to make the corrections and explain what each error is, or simply ask them how many errors they can spot. (That's just an idea inspired by what you wrote).

I LOVE your point that for most Gr 9 students this is the last time they will ever study electricity. This unit is NOT about preparing for Grade 11 physics. It's about getting everyday questions answered and learning things about electricity that will be useful for the rest of one's life.  Things like (relatively speaking) how much energy do various appliances use, and what is the relationship between current and energy consumed. What appliances really affect your hydro bill? Your TV, your sub-woofer, your hot water heater, toaster oven, iron, cellphone charger.

Thanks for all your writing this term. It's gone a long way toward showing me the great potential you have as a classroom teacher, thanks to your love of experiential learning!

Happy New Year--see you soon--I'll try to send the file with your lesson descriptions, and I'd like to talk about it with you after you've had a chance to look at it.

Yours,
tom

One last post from practicum

It's been about a week since the end of placement, and after a few long sleeps and days spent outside in the snow, I feel like I've recuperated enough to think about school again. I didn't write a lot in my last week of placement because it was a little crazy, and it didn't feel like there was a huge amount of teaching/learning going on. It was a bit frustrating to feel like the last week of an already short placement was a bit of a write-off.

I did teach a few lessons though. I taught a lesson on power use/energy rates in my grade 9 science class. We did a game with teams guessing "how much is one kWh" for different things. ie: how long could you light a lightbulb, how long could you ride a bike, how long does it take for a windmill to produce a kWh. For each thing, the closest guess got a point. I thought this was a good way to start out, since this is the standard unit of energy measurement for household use, and it's important to have an idea of how much energy a kWh is. Then I did a note on conversions (J=>kWh, W=>kW...), and worksheets.

This seems to be my AT's standard lesson. In an attempt to avoid the pitfall of students copying from the board without taking any of it in, I wrote the note out and photocopied it for them. This didn't work out too well. One student put headphones in, and stopped listening. One asked me "do I have to read this?" as I handed her the note I had copied. The general consensus seemed to be: "I was told not to copy this down, so that means I don't need to listen." Is this unavoidable? I feel like there must be a better solution. In my experience with this class the students either copy from the board and don't take anything in, or they don't copy from the board and don't pay attention at all. My AT said that I should learn a lesson from this and have them copy notes from the board, since at least I have their attention in some form. I'd really like to try it out with my own class, because I think the tone could be set so that students pay attention even when they don't have to copy anything down. Another option is fill in the blanks notes. I'm interested in looking into that more, but I feel that it may risk the same pitfall as copying notes....students are listening so hard for the one word that fits in the blank that they don't hear anything else. I think the main conclusion I will take from this experience is that I haven't found an effective way of transferring information/knowledge to students by standing in front of the class talking and writing, no matter what method I use. If it's really important for them to receive information, I should explore other possibilities.

Teaching this physics unit has made me ask some broader questions about what I would want a grade 9 electricity unit to look like. I think it's important to start with this idea: most of these students will never do an electricity unit again, and those who will study electricity further won't do so until grade 11. I feel that that needs to be almost a central theme of this unit, and the effectiveness of anything we teach should be viewed in that light. To me, that means that things we teach can fit into a few different categories: a) Things that are really surprising/interesting/exciting and will convince students that physics is fun. b) Things that will be useful to students in everyday life, or will pique their curiosity about day to day things that relate to electricity OR c) Things that will stick with them until or come back to them in grade 11 physics, and help them succeed more in physics.

I feel that the c) category often gets too much focus, and often doesn't have the effect that it should. Many students won't continue with physics. For those who do, will mastery of equations like V=E/Q or I=Q/t do them any good? I think that sorting parts of lessons into the 3 categories above could be more effective for me than sorting them based on what curriculum expectation they fit. I'd like to say that I've covered all the expected curriculum, but only if I've done it in an effective way, and checking off specific expectations without thinking about if or how the information will actually serve students doesn't seem very effective.

More tomorrow, I hope!

You can never write too much, Jamie!  And with your writing, I almost feel like I'm there. I'll try to write more tomorrow, I'm still chasing deadlines while trying to keep up with blogs and read posters!

Impressed by not surprised that you create so many activities for students--you of all people appreciate the learning that comes with first-hand experience.

You've done the best job with the Daily Lesson Analysis--look forward to pulling them all together and seeing what you think of that approach.

I hate to say it by your account of JY makes me think of that poor lost soul in Connecticut who shut up a school on Friday. Hard to make much headway with someone like that in just 3 weeks.

More soon, I hope!
Tom