During my practicum I have had many teaching opportunities thanks to my mentor teacher. My mentor teacher has been very open to letting me teach as much as I was willing and I leaped at every opportunity to take the reins and get in front of the class.
SPHERO
One of the first lessons that I had the opportunity to teach was using a piece of educational technology known as the Sphero Sprk+. The Sphero is a programmable robotic sphere that can be programmed using block coding using the Apple iPads.
Lesson 1 was a ‘what do the students know’, where we had a discussed the students experience with the technology. I then set up a maze that the students were expected to program their Sphero and have it navigate through the maze without contacting the sides.
Lesson 2 the concept of refactoring or ‘looping’ was introduced. The students and I discussed what the concept was and then I provided a small example and demonstration using the classroom tv. The students were then required to recreate what was shown to them and improve on it.
Critical/Creative Thinking, Communication, Personal Responsibility
ADST, Language Arts, Mathematics
PHYSICAL EDUCATION (P.E.)
During the course of the fall practicum, any time I could work with the students, not only in my classroom, where I could explore physical education I volunteered.
Basketball was one of the main forms of P.E. that I supervised both in the morning and at lunch. In the beginning it was outside, but as the weather became less desirable it was moved indoors. There was also an opportunity to assist in coaching the basketball teams. As I am an avid youth sports coach having this opportunity was exciting. I coached the jr. and sr. boys and girls teams and helped prepare them for the teams tournaments. The regular coaches were sometimes busy and were very comfortable with leaving the team with me.
Conditioning Circuit was an idea that I came up with for my first opportunity to teach in the gym. The students were required to move around for station to station in the gym. After a brief walk around explanation at each station the student had 1.5mins at each station before they were required to move to the next station with a 10 second break between each station.
Survivor was a lesson that I taught that had students work together to complete survivor style challenges as tribes (teams). After randomly selecting tribes by students choosing headbands (buffs) that had tribe colours on them students were shown what each challenge involved. Since this was survivor I themed it as a reward challenge where the tribes were playing for reward in the form of Timbits!
Communication, Critical Thinking, Personal/Social Responsibility
Physical Education, Language Arts
SLAM POETRY
Slam poetry was a 6 lesson unit that I co-taught with my teaching partner. The students were required to work together in pre-decided groups and use one poem from a preselected list to rehearse and record each member of the group using an iPad. The groups also were required to edit their videos using the software program iMovie. The culmination of the unit was a showcase where each group were required to stream their video to the class tv at which time there was not only the two pre-service teachers there, but the classroom teacher, both VIU instructors, and a guest from the school district who is involved in slam poetry at the district level.
Through out the unit students were also required to complete and hand in a graphic organizer. The organizer had a rubric the pre-service teachers would use to assess the students work both individually and as a group, a self assessment that was to be completed individually, and a peer group assessment that was to be completed collaboratively by the group members during the showcase. Each students organizer was assessed using the rubric and individualized descriptive feedback was given for each student. The classroom teacher used the assessment and feedback for the students grade in class.
Creative Thinking, Communication, Personal/Social Responsibility
Language Arts, Performing Arts, ADST
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