ARC I 2011 Math Methods blog for reflection, discussion and dissemination of information.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Student teaching: Last week
In reflecting on the preparation you received from ARC for student teaching, identify what was effective in preparing you and what do you feel needed more attention to better prepare you? Explain both.
I feel as though I was thrown full speed into my student teaching. My 1st day of observation I was asked to present a 20 minute lesson, “on the fly”, and then told that I was taking the class over in it’s entirety on day 2. I learned SO MUCH! I think for my personality style this was an effective method of learning. It was exhausting and emotional, but I feel like I stepped up to the challenge and know what works and what I need more work on.
I need to work on being a step ahead of my students. I taught Algebra 2, and I barely had enough time at night to prepare the 4 lessons for the next day, never mind prepping for the following day. I think when I begin to teach my 8th grade class (in less than a month….), that I will have more time to get ahead of my students. Instead of prepping 20 classes a week, I will be prepping 10. I know I will have more responsibilities in addition to teaching, but hopefully I will have a nice balance between those duties and prepping classes.
Certainly the focus on class room management and lesson planning were well received and did a lot to prepare us for our summer teaching experience.
Although both Randy and Jaf hit on the idea (several times) that the students may not have the prior knowledge that we are expecting, I still believe I grossly underestimated this factor heading into my teaching experience. I'm not sure what can be done about this in terms of getting ARC teachers better informed about the lack of prior knowledge of the summer school students (especially those in credit recovery programs).
from Brenda, take 2! - Classroom management (perras), keeping students busy (dunn and methods), and task analysis were all key in my student teaching experience. Although it was very time-consuming to prepare for the classes, I was able to execute my plan and watch the learning occur. What I need to do a better job of is having enrichment activities constantly prepared for my more advanced students. I found that when I did have those activities available, the students were all content and working. If I did not have the activities ready I would have to redirect their attention. I was lucky that they liked to work together so I would often pair a stonger student with a weaker student so they could help each other. They all worked really well together!
Overall I think ARC was very effective in preparing me for student teaching. Most of the core sessions were very informative, such as Don Perras, the Special Ed sessions, and Tom Moore. These sessions gave me not only an understanding of what teaching would be like, but ideas and tools of the trade. Don Perras’ sessions helped me to realize how important classroom management is and gave many solutions. The Special Ed sessions opened my eyes even further to the needs of special needs students. Tom Moore’s sessions were just fascinating and gave a peak into his personal style of teaching. A few of the core sessions however I felt were a waist of time, and could have been eliminated or given as handouts.
Methods was also very effective in preparing me for student teaching. Having us read all the books before ARC started and blog about it was a great way to get us the information and get us thinking about teaching before the demands of ARC began. Starting off the first week with the Microteach wasted no time in getting our feet wet. The task analysis idea is a very powerful one that I will continue to use as a tool. Also, I found that mostly all of the discussions and presentation topics in Methods have been helpful, such as learning theory, classroom management, special education, etc. There’s nothing I would really change about methods to make it more effective.
Organization organization, organization. ARC has helped me in organizing my lessons. I agree with Chandan, in that I underestimated greatly what the students were supposed to know. When I taught a couple of lessons I experienced an " eye opener" . The " Do Now" activities helped greatly to assess the prior knowledge. What surprised me is that I was teaching what should have been prior knowledge which was connected to that day's objective. The task analysis helped structure prior knowledge. I must admit I have to work on talking less in the classroom. Present the material and quickly give them the work. Make my students do the work quickly and scaffold my teaching so that I can chunk information, this way I will make the students more responsible for their learning and notes for them to make mistakes. Mistakes are ok. This goes for my students and myself. I worked too hard on being perfect in my execution that I lost sight of students will make mistakes no matter " how perfect I tried to be " or how clear I thought the material was supposed to be. Perras stated in last week's core session that " the challenge of producing a functional, actualized learner requires an entirely different philosophy and repertoire of interventions to succeed" This has been my challenge this summer but I am thankful that I am learning new strategies every week along with Johnson's, Wong's , and Lemov's literature to aid in finding a balance in the classroom.
Overall ARC has been an absolutely amazing experience that has provided us with a wealth of knowledge to be successful in the classroom. At times I was on the brink of information overload, but I have taken everything in and I am still standing. There are three different things that I have learned from ARC that were especially helpful once I started student teaching. The first thing that was worth it's weight in gold were the two Micro-teaches we had prior to student teaching. Being able to apply the sessions we had on proper lesson planning, task analysis, etc into a role play scenario was very helpful. Even when I worked in sales, the most effective way to apply what we learned in training seminars was to first role play, applying the skills in different situations before using them in our job. The second thing I found most useful from ARC was the emphasis the program placed on classroom management. Whether it was our pre-program readings, DP or our Methods section, I felt as though I had a variety of tools to both prevent and change the inappropriate behavior in my classroom. The last tool that helped me immensely in the classroom were the Do Now's. I know this could fall into a more general category of classroom norm's, but I felt the emphasis that was placed on the Do Now's was extremely informative. Scott Dunn provided us many different Do Now activities we could use in the class, but our training with Randy was much more practical. After talking with other ARC members, our Method's class provided much more detail on how to effectively use Do Now's in the classroom, and I think it showed in our student teaching.
As fat as what I wish we had more preparation with, I would have to say SMART boards would be on the top of my list. Even though two days were attributed to technology sessions and SMART board training, I think a day in Methods to help us structure a lesson using the board would have been extremely effective. I might be in the minority here because the SMART board in my student teaching classroom was broken. I was not able to take what we learned in the tech. sessions and use it in my teaching. That being said, I think it has the potential to be such a useful way to engage today's students, and would of liked to have a day to "unlock its power" during Methods.
I felt ARC did a good job preparing us for student teaching. I wish there was some way of having more observation time of our cooperating teacher's lessons. (I actually benefitted from this.) Periodically my cooperating teacher would give a lesson. I learned so much from her and I tried to incorporate useful methods in my next lesson design, so it was very meaningful that it was interspersed in the process. I felt this had the greatest impact on my improvement (other than all our micro-teaches and valuable feedback from Randy and Jaf), and since it was in my student teaching classroom setting, it was highly relevant. I hope ARC would make this part of the student teaching experience on a regular basis. It might lessen some of our exhaustion too if the cooperating teachers gave periodic lessons so that we could, breathe, think and learn from them.
Given the compressed time schedule of the ARC summer program I really can’t think of any weakness in what was presented in terms of me seeing something in the classroom completely unexpected.
In fact the most challenging part of ARC was the compressed time schedule itself and that was also a good teaching point in terms of improving time management skills. I really have only two comments that might be used to tweak ARC (at least the summer version) in the future.
First, piggy backing on what Catherine said (and the fact that it actually didn’t work out for Brenda) I think scheduling five days of observation of the same cooperating teacher is a bit of overkill. If the logistics had permitted it I would have really enjoyed each of the Math teachers at EHHS for one day each then spend the last two days of observation with my cooperating teacher. In the case of EHHS that would allow me to watch four different teaching styles of experienced teachers and still given me enough time in what would become my classes to prepare to take over the teaching the second week.
The second point would be possibly including a more descriptive letter of time and work requirements in the acceptance package. Possibly even something along the lines of an open letter from the previous ARC summer session teacher candidates with a few “what to expect” snippets to help incoming students better prepare for their experience. The letter should be screened by the ARC staff to make sure it is factual, unemotional, and consistent with the ARC intent.
I gleaned so much from DP's lessons on classroom management because I am aware of a lot of teachers who are stressed out as a result of lack of CM. There is a high turnover in teaching as a result of that as well.
Two things from methods that wereeffective in preparing me are; the preparation of “task analysis”, I realized once I was done with my task analysis,a major part of my lesson plan was done.
Also “modeling real life situations/practices” of our cooperating teachers, e.g. do now, activities, classroom management etc. modeling exactly what they would do in their classroom with students, so they were telling (auditory) us and showing (Visual) us as well.
We never realized how little the students knew (PK) until we actually taught them even though we were told this several times during Methods. “Experience is the best teacher” is a true saying in this situation. I can’t count how many times I was surprised at the fact that they did not know what they should have known.
On the first day of class someone said – “there is a difference btw knowing Math and teaching it”, I can’t remember who said that- it’s all a blur to me now. I found that to be true, the first day I taught. In general ARC has been a great experience for me.
I agree with Len, I wish we had time to observe different teachers, even if it were our cooperating teachers in a classroom other than the ARC classroom, it is hard to observe if you are the one being taught.
There are a lot of ways I feel let down by ARC in terms of preparing students for student teaching. The biggest waste of time for me was the week of observation before my student teaching began. It was interesting to see how a teacher ran a summer school class for a day but after that I did not get anything else out of my time at Hall High School. The cooperating teacher practiced none of the things we learned about and it was almost torture sitting through that class everyday. My time could have been much better spent meeting with my cooperating teacher, discussing what the curriculum would be for the course I was teaching, and developing lesson plans.
Also, there were not any SMART boards where I student taught and even if there were, I would have had no training on one prior to student teaching. Even when we did learn about the boards in the computer session there was only about an hour demonstration and most of it was not hands on. I personally could have benefited a lot more from learning more about the SMART boards than spending two hours on how to use equation editor. Now I am getting ready to leave ARC and I am having a fellow teacher friend teach my how to use the SMART board on Saturday because I never learned how in ARC.
I think one of the best things I learned was from Scott Dunn and really spending time getting to know the students. Although not having much time in summer school, I did give the students an interest inventory and this helped me get a sense of who my students were and it also allowed me to share some information about myself with the students as well.
I'll start with what I thought wasn't especially effective preparation. I agree with Adam and Len about the week of observation. The teacher I observed taught me nothing I could use - only what not to do. And spending an entire week in her class was painful. A couple of days would have been sufficient to get a feel for the summer school environment and the nature of the students. In retrospect, I would've been better off staying at EHHS to teach having gotten to know some of those kids. I think they would've benefitted as well - Bruce and Susan Nolan (ARC 4-8 Math) I'm certain would vouch for that.
I'd also add that some of the Methods classes spent too much time on topics I don't see myself using much if at all. For example, spending an entire afternoon on using/playing with manipulatives was not a good use of time. The very next day, it seemed Randy had to blast thru some very important subject matter - how to construct a test, scaffolding notes, etc. I would've much rather spent longer perids of time on learning/discussing those practical items than playing with teaching toys/aids. The same thing occured in the computer lab. Way too much stuff, not enough time. Particularly the 2nd one. Just when we got started on something really cool and definitely useful we had to move on. Clearly, time is the biggest challenge for the summer ARC program.
On a positive note, learning how to properly construct a task analysis is invaluable in really breaking down mathematical problems so they can be taught to any level student. The classroom management lectures were also terrific in preparing us for what we'd see in summer school. Scott Dunn's seminar on the "Reluctant Learner" came true to life in a couple classes I observed and taught. Applying some of his ideas - particularly finding activities to keep the students engaged - were very helpful.
I'd also like to quickly add how useful/practical the books our cohort read before ARC started (Johnson, Lemov, Wong) were. I will continue to pour over these as I teach since I have bought into all their ideas about teaching. I know the 1st days of school are crucial in implementing procedures and establishing norms. I am also planning on using the U-shape desk formation.
I think one of the best things I learned was Marzano's nine teaching strategies. It helped me get a better understanding of what classroom activities are effective in teaching students. I tried to use compare and contrast in my student teaching as much as possible. For example, I often asked my students what was different about a problem from the last one.
One thing that I think would have been helpful is to have seen a few more examples of written lesson plans. I think everyone writes their lesson plans differently, and I am curious how other people structure their plans. How much detail they use, what strategies they use (e.g. highlighting), etc. I have several lesson plans with varying levels of detail. I've also done lesson plans that were more of an outline in nature with more notes attached. I haven't quite found a rhythm yet with lesson planning and I think nailing down a format would help me be more efficient with time.
I will echo what many people said regarding the first week of observation. Although I actually did begin teaching a few lessons that week, having a full week was way too much time – especially when viewing cooperating teachers that are implementing none of what we’ve been taught.
I think something that may have helped overall would be to have a certain portion of Methods be a time when you can discuss lessons with others (CCT 5.4) – especially if you are teaching the same course. You could then brainstorm with colleagues on ideas for lessons, activities, etc. Furthermore, I also think we should have actually observed others in our cohort actually teaching at the schools. We are the people trying to implement what we’ve been taught. Let’s see what others are coming up with, how they are engaging their students, what the seating is like, etc. Maybe even observe ARC students in other cohorts.
As far as the topics that gave me the most preparation for student teaching – 1. Task analysis (agree with Roger on this one), 2. Assessment and 3. Building positive relationships with your students.
I don't know that anything could have prepared me for the sheer volume of work involved in student teaching.
I could have used some direction on how to cram everything we should have covered, plus all the missing prior knowledge in just 4 weeks at 2 hours a day. I felt pressured to cover as much as possible, while my students wanted to work as little as possible - so we were constantly at cross purposes.
I think six weeks of teaching was not enough time to better implement all the important information received during lectures. There were very knowledgeable and intelligent professors invited for core classes. These professors gave a lot of interesting and useful information I will definitely use in my future carrier. The most useful information I got from Professor Don Perras. If Professor Perras could give small group sessions that would be extremely helpful. If it would be possible to increase his hours that would be very helpful as well. If someone films some classes and puts them on ARC's blog it would allow everyone to better understand parts of the lectures that originally were not clear or students did not pay attention to nuances because they did not experience this in their teaching yet.
from Brenda
ReplyDeleteI feel as though I was thrown full speed into my student teaching. My 1st day of observation I was asked to present a 20 minute lesson, “on the fly”, and then told that I was taking the class over in it’s entirety on day 2. I learned SO MUCH! I think for my personality style this was an effective method of learning. It was exhausting and emotional, but I feel like I stepped up to the challenge and know what works and what I need more work on.
I need to work on being a step ahead of my students. I taught Algebra 2, and I barely had enough time at night to prepare the 4 lessons for the next day, never mind prepping for the following day. I think when I begin to teach my 8th grade class (in less than a month….), that I will have more time to get ahead of my students. Instead of prepping 20 classes a week, I will be prepping 10. I know I will have more responsibilities in addition to teaching, but hopefully I will have a nice balance between those duties and prepping classes.
I revised the post after I found that it wasn't clear, hence Brenda posted something a little different.
ReplyDeleteSorry.
Certainly the focus on class room management and lesson planning were well received and did a lot to prepare us for our summer teaching experience.
ReplyDeleteAlthough both Randy and Jaf hit on the idea (several times) that the students may not have the prior knowledge that we are expecting, I still believe I grossly underestimated this factor heading into my teaching experience. I'm not sure what can be done about this in terms of getting ARC teachers better informed about the lack of prior knowledge of the summer school students (especially those in credit recovery programs).
from Brenda, take 2! - Classroom management (perras), keeping students busy (dunn and methods), and task analysis were all key in my student teaching experience. Although it was very time-consuming to prepare for the classes, I was able to execute my plan and watch the learning occur.
ReplyDeleteWhat I need to do a better job of is having enrichment activities constantly prepared for my more advanced students. I found that when I did have those activities available, the students were all content and working. If I did not have the activities ready I would have to redirect their attention. I was lucky that they liked to work together so I would often pair a stonger student with a weaker student so they could help each other. They all worked really well together!
Overall I think ARC was very effective in preparing me for student teaching. Most of the core sessions were very informative, such as Don Perras, the Special Ed sessions, and Tom Moore. These sessions gave me not only an understanding of what teaching would be like, but ideas and tools of the trade. Don Perras’ sessions helped me to realize how important classroom management is and gave many solutions. The Special Ed sessions opened my eyes even further to the needs of special needs students. Tom Moore’s sessions were just fascinating and gave a peak into his personal style of teaching. A few of the core sessions however I felt were a waist of time, and could have been eliminated or given as handouts.
ReplyDeleteMethods was also very effective in preparing me for student teaching. Having us read all the books before ARC started and blog about it was a great way to get us the information and get us thinking about teaching before the demands of ARC began. Starting off the first week with the Microteach wasted no time in getting our feet wet. The task analysis idea is a very powerful one that I will continue to use as a tool. Also, I found that mostly all of the discussions and presentation topics in Methods have been helpful, such as learning theory, classroom management, special education, etc. There’s nothing I would really change about methods to make it more effective.
Organization organization, organization. ARC has helped me in organizing my lessons. I agree with Chandan, in that I underestimated greatly what the students were supposed to know. When I taught a couple of lessons I experienced an " eye opener" . The " Do Now" activities helped greatly to assess the prior knowledge. What surprised me is that I was teaching what should have been prior knowledge which was connected to that day's objective. The task analysis helped structure prior knowledge. I must admit I have to work on talking less in the classroom. Present the material and quickly give them the work. Make my students do the work quickly and scaffold my teaching so that I can chunk information, this way I will make the students more responsible for their learning and notes for them to make mistakes. Mistakes are ok. This goes for my students and myself. I worked too hard on being perfect in my execution that I lost sight of students will make mistakes no matter " how perfect I tried to be " or how clear I thought the material was supposed to be. Perras stated in last week's core session that " the challenge of producing a functional, actualized learner requires an entirely different philosophy and repertoire of interventions to succeed" This has been my challenge this summer but I am thankful that I am learning new strategies every week along with Johnson's, Wong's , and Lemov's literature to aid in finding a balance in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteOverall ARC has been an absolutely amazing experience that has provided us with a wealth of knowledge to be successful in the classroom. At times I was on the brink of information overload, but I have taken everything in and I am still standing. There are three different things that I have learned from ARC that were especially helpful once I started student teaching. The first thing that was worth it's weight in gold were the two Micro-teaches we had prior to student teaching. Being able to apply the sessions we had on proper lesson planning, task analysis, etc into a role play scenario was very helpful. Even when I worked in sales, the most effective way to apply what we learned in training seminars was to first role play, applying the skills in different situations before using them in our job. The second thing I found most useful from ARC was the emphasis the program placed on classroom management. Whether it was our pre-program readings, DP or our Methods section, I felt as though I had a variety of tools to both prevent and change the inappropriate behavior in my classroom. The last tool that helped me immensely in the classroom were the Do Now's. I know this could fall into a more general category of classroom norm's, but I felt the emphasis that was placed on the Do Now's was extremely informative. Scott Dunn provided us many different Do Now activities we could use in the class, but our training with Randy was much more practical. After talking with other ARC members, our Method's class provided much more detail on how to effectively use Do Now's in the classroom, and I think it showed in our student teaching.
ReplyDeleteAs fat as what I wish we had more preparation with, I would have to say SMART boards would be on the top of my list. Even though two days were attributed to technology sessions and SMART board training, I think a day in Methods to help us structure a lesson using the board would have been extremely effective. I might be in the minority here because the SMART board in my student teaching classroom was broken. I was not able to take what we learned in the tech. sessions and use it in my teaching. That being said, I think it has the potential to be such a useful way to engage today's students, and would of liked to have a day to "unlock its power" during Methods.
I felt ARC did a good job preparing us for student teaching. I wish there was some way of having more observation time of our cooperating teacher's lessons. (I actually benefitted from this.) Periodically my cooperating teacher would give a lesson. I learned so much from her and I tried to incorporate useful methods in my next lesson design, so it was very meaningful that it was interspersed in the process. I felt this had the greatest impact on my improvement (other than all our micro-teaches and valuable feedback from Randy and Jaf), and since it was in my student teaching classroom setting, it was highly relevant. I hope ARC would make this part of the student teaching experience on a regular basis. It might lessen some of our exhaustion too if the cooperating teachers gave periodic lessons so that we could, breathe, think and learn from them.
ReplyDeletePosted by Len
ReplyDeleteGiven the compressed time schedule of the ARC summer program I really can’t think of any weakness in what was presented in terms of me seeing something in the classroom completely unexpected.
In fact the most challenging part of ARC was the compressed time schedule itself and that was also a good teaching point in terms of improving time management skills. I really have only two comments that might be used to tweak ARC (at least the summer version) in the future.
First, piggy backing on what Catherine said (and the fact that it actually didn’t work out for Brenda) I think scheduling five days of observation of the same cooperating teacher is a bit of overkill. If the logistics had permitted it I would have really enjoyed each of the Math teachers at EHHS for one day each then spend the last two days of observation with my cooperating teacher. In the case of EHHS that would allow me to watch four different teaching styles of experienced teachers and still given me enough time in what would become my classes to prepare to take over the teaching the second week.
The second point would be possibly including a more descriptive letter of time and work requirements in the acceptance package. Possibly even something along the lines of an open letter from the previous ARC summer session teacher candidates with a few “what to expect” snippets to help incoming students better prepare for their experience. The letter should be screened by the ARC staff to make sure it is factual, unemotional, and consistent with the ARC intent.
Post by Ayileru
ReplyDeleteI gleaned so much from DP's lessons on classroom management because I am aware of a lot of teachers who are stressed out as a result of lack of CM. There is a high turnover in teaching as a result of that as well.
Two things from methods that wereeffective in preparing me are; the preparation of “task analysis”, I realized once I was done with my task analysis,a major part of my lesson plan was done.
Also “modeling real life situations/practices” of our cooperating teachers, e.g. do now, activities, classroom management etc. modeling exactly what they would do in their classroom with students, so they were telling (auditory) us and showing (Visual) us as well.
We never realized how little the students knew (PK) until we actually taught them even though we were told this several times during Methods. “Experience is the best teacher” is a true saying in this situation. I can’t count how many times I was surprised at the fact that they did not know what they should have known.
On the first day of class someone said – “there is a difference btw knowing Math and teaching it”, I can’t remember who said that- it’s all a blur to me now. I found that to be true, the first day I taught. In general ARC has been a great experience for me.
I agree with Len, I wish we had time to observe different teachers, even if it were our cooperating teachers in a classroom other than the ARC classroom, it is hard to observe if you are the one being taught.
Post by Adam,
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of ways I feel let down by ARC in terms of preparing students for student teaching. The biggest waste of time for me was the week of observation before my student teaching began. It was interesting to see how a teacher ran a summer school class for a day but after that I did not get anything else out of my time at Hall High School. The cooperating teacher practiced none of the things we learned about and it was almost torture sitting through that class everyday. My time could have been much better spent meeting with my cooperating teacher, discussing what the curriculum would be for the course I was teaching, and developing lesson plans.
Also, there were not any SMART boards where I student taught and even if there were, I would have had no training on one prior to student teaching. Even when we did learn about the boards in the computer session there was only about an hour demonstration and most of it was not hands on. I personally could have benefited a lot more from learning more about the SMART boards than spending two hours on how to use equation editor. Now I am getting ready to leave ARC and I am having a fellow teacher friend teach my how to use the SMART board on Saturday because I never learned how in ARC.
I think one of the best things I learned was from Scott Dunn and really spending time getting to know the students. Although not having much time in summer school, I did give the students an interest inventory and this helped me get a sense of who my students were and it also allowed me to share some information about myself with the students as well.
I'll start with what I thought wasn't especially effective preparation. I agree with Adam and Len about the week of observation. The teacher I observed taught me nothing I could use - only what not to do. And spending an entire week in her class was painful. A couple of days would have been sufficient to get a feel for the summer school environment and the nature of the students. In retrospect, I would've been better off staying at EHHS to teach having gotten to know some of those kids. I think they would've benefitted as well - Bruce and Susan Nolan (ARC 4-8 Math) I'm certain would vouch for that.
ReplyDeleteI'd also add that some of the Methods classes spent too much time on topics I don't see myself using much if at all. For example, spending an entire afternoon on using/playing with manipulatives was not a good use of time. The very next day, it seemed Randy had to blast thru some very important subject matter - how to construct a test, scaffolding notes, etc. I would've much rather spent longer perids of time on learning/discussing those practical items than playing with teaching toys/aids. The same thing occured in the computer lab. Way too much stuff, not enough time. Particularly the 2nd one. Just when we got started on something really cool and definitely useful we had to move on. Clearly, time is the biggest challenge for the summer ARC program.
On a positive note, learning how to properly construct a task analysis is invaluable in really breaking down mathematical problems so they can be taught to any level student. The classroom management lectures were also terrific in preparing us for what we'd see in summer school. Scott Dunn's seminar on the "Reluctant Learner" came true to life in a couple classes I observed and taught. Applying some of his ideas - particularly finding activities to keep the students engaged - were very helpful.
I'd also like to quickly add how useful/practical the books our cohort read before ARC started (Johnson, Lemov, Wong) were. I will continue to pour over these as I teach since I have bought into all their ideas about teaching. I know the 1st days of school are crucial in implementing procedures and establishing norms. I am also planning on using the U-shape desk formation.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the best things I learned was Marzano's nine teaching strategies. It helped me get a better understanding of what classroom activities are effective in teaching students. I tried to use compare and contrast in my student teaching as much as possible. For example, I often asked my students what was different about a problem from the last one.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I think would have been helpful is to have seen a few more examples of written lesson plans. I think everyone writes their lesson plans differently, and I am curious how other people structure their plans. How much detail they use, what strategies they use (e.g. highlighting), etc. I have several lesson plans with varying levels of detail. I've also done lesson plans that were more of an outline in nature with more notes attached. I haven't quite found a rhythm yet with lesson planning and I think nailing down a format would help me be more efficient with time.
I will echo what many people said regarding the first week of observation. Although I actually did begin teaching a few lessons that week, having a full week was way too much time – especially when viewing cooperating teachers that are implementing none of what we’ve been taught.
ReplyDeleteI think something that may have helped overall would be to have a certain portion of Methods be a time when you can discuss lessons with others (CCT 5.4) – especially if you are teaching the same course. You could then brainstorm with colleagues on ideas for lessons, activities, etc. Furthermore, I also think we should have actually observed others in our cohort actually teaching at the schools. We are the people trying to implement what we’ve been taught. Let’s see what others are coming up with, how they are engaging their students, what the seating is like, etc. Maybe even observe ARC students in other cohorts.
As far as the topics that gave me the most preparation for student teaching – 1. Task analysis (agree with Roger on this one), 2. Assessment and 3. Building positive relationships with your students.
I don't know that anything could have prepared me for the sheer volume of work involved in student teaching.
ReplyDeleteI could have used some direction on how to cram everything we should have covered, plus all the missing prior knowledge in just 4 weeks at 2 hours a day. I felt pressured to cover as much as possible, while my students wanted to work as little as possible - so we were constantly at cross purposes.
I think six weeks of teaching was not enough time to better implement all the important information received during lectures. There were very knowledgeable and intelligent professors invited for core classes. These professors gave a lot of interesting and useful information I will definitely use in my future carrier. The most useful information I got from Professor Don Perras. If Professor Perras could give small group sessions that would be extremely helpful. If it would be possible to increase his hours that would be very helpful as well. If someone films some classes and puts them on ARC's blog it would allow everyone to better understand parts of the lectures that originally were not clear or students did not pay attention to nuances because they did not experience this in their teaching yet.
ReplyDelete