I have unfortunately been very poor in my effort to keep up this blog. Whilst it has continued to be at the forefront of my interest, and i have endeavoured to check the edchat stream regularly, I have still not written nearly as much as I had hoped.
This update is to put down online my thoughts, experiences and developments as I have started my heavy practical teaching experience. This semester, I have been at a local public school with a very experienced master teacher. The school is quite high socio-economic status and there is a lot of money in the school. The school is part of a government initiative to be one of the top developing schools which provides it more money, staff and resources.
What I have loved about this practical experience is the smart board in the classroom. Getting used to the notebook software has been a great challenge but also lots of fun. The functionality is incredible. Just today for example, we had the kids (Years 1 and 2) working in the computer room on the notebook software. They are creating a virtual book. Basically, they have all designed characters and backgrounds and trees and tree houses. These images were then dutifully scanned into the computer. Students were then able to create pages in the book to accommodate script that was written by another class. Once they made their pages of background, they can use the screen capture function to move characters across the page and have a moving animation. The possiblities for this technology are incredible, and the fact that my master teacher has year 1s and 2s doing it (6 & 7 years old) is astounding.
Today, as I write this on a little bit of a high as I had a successful lesson. For the first time in weeks I feel like I gained control of the class and my classes were meaningful, well received and achieved the outcomes I had hoped to achieve. My thought processes had changed for these lessons, and over the next few days I will explain why, but the short story is: I focused on my own creativity. I started with the outcomes, and moved onto the activity. I came up with engaging activities which would demonstrate and help students to learn what I wanted them to learn. It was only after I knew what I wanted the students to achieve that I began to set the differentiated tasks for the students.
The second lesson I did today was a science lesson. This one could have got out of hand, however I was able to direct the class and keep on top of any extra behaviour that might occur. The lesson went well as students knew what was expected, I did everything in small steps and the students had the promise of an engaging fun activity which they could learn but also demonstrate understanding. What I liked most of this activity was the language that students were using to describe what was happening.
I will endeavour to write more over the next few days as I battle with UNI assessments and Lesson Planning.
This update is to put down online my thoughts, experiences and developments as I have started my heavy practical teaching experience. This semester, I have been at a local public school with a very experienced master teacher. The school is quite high socio-economic status and there is a lot of money in the school. The school is part of a government initiative to be one of the top developing schools which provides it more money, staff and resources.
What I have loved about this practical experience is the smart board in the classroom. Getting used to the notebook software has been a great challenge but also lots of fun. The functionality is incredible. Just today for example, we had the kids (Years 1 and 2) working in the computer room on the notebook software. They are creating a virtual book. Basically, they have all designed characters and backgrounds and trees and tree houses. These images were then dutifully scanned into the computer. Students were then able to create pages in the book to accommodate script that was written by another class. Once they made their pages of background, they can use the screen capture function to move characters across the page and have a moving animation. The possiblities for this technology are incredible, and the fact that my master teacher has year 1s and 2s doing it (6 & 7 years old) is astounding.
Today, as I write this on a little bit of a high as I had a successful lesson. For the first time in weeks I feel like I gained control of the class and my classes were meaningful, well received and achieved the outcomes I had hoped to achieve. My thought processes had changed for these lessons, and over the next few days I will explain why, but the short story is: I focused on my own creativity. I started with the outcomes, and moved onto the activity. I came up with engaging activities which would demonstrate and help students to learn what I wanted them to learn. It was only after I knew what I wanted the students to achieve that I began to set the differentiated tasks for the students.
The second lesson I did today was a science lesson. This one could have got out of hand, however I was able to direct the class and keep on top of any extra behaviour that might occur. The lesson went well as students knew what was expected, I did everything in small steps and the students had the promise of an engaging fun activity which they could learn but also demonstrate understanding. What I liked most of this activity was the language that students were using to describe what was happening.
I will endeavour to write more over the next few days as I battle with UNI assessments and Lesson Planning.
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