Four weeks of practicum, or a month if you will, seems like a long period of time but as soon as you reach that final week it all seems to have flown by. During my EDUC 490 practicum from November to December I learned and grew a lot as an educator. I was so pleased to have been placed in a grade 2/3 split class (my two favourite grades)! This group of students were simply wonderful! As a group they were all very kindhearted, open to new learning, and eager to try new things. I would say my biggest take away from this practicum was that it allowed me to be indulged in and experience the most important ingredient to any successful lesson plan…student engagement. I know we talk about this concept frequently in our courses leading up to practicum and how it should be at the root of all our lessons. However, I’ve come to learn that intending for a lesson to be engaging and interesting to learners and actually making this come to fruition are two very separate things. I’m not writing this from the perspective of having created lessons that didn’t act to evoke this in students, in fact it is quite the opposite. During practicum there were times when I wrote a lesson thinking it would be just sort of Okay or I wasn’t overly confident in its potential to be anything uber engaging, but then I would find myself surprised by its success in reality. For example, I taught a lesson on 3D shapes that was just meant to introduce the class to the concept. After facilitating a Math Talk on the subject I invited the class to create 3D paper models of various shapes from a template. We all did the first one of a cube together, and then I left the class to work through the rest. To give some context, the schedule for the day was to have Math for about 40 minutes and then move onto Art which would take us to lunch. To be frank, I really wasn’t expecting for my students to find this shape building activity overly fun or exciting. The goal for this lesson was to simply help them to understand the characteristics of 3D shapes. I could not have been more wrong though! Every student was incredibly engaged and working very hard to complete their shapes. Would you believe it if I told you that this group was so focused and engaged with their work that we didn’t even stop for Art but worked all the way until lunch!? Better yet, when I asked for everyone to finish up what they were doing there were even some sighs of disappointment! It truly was a wonderful surprise of a lesson. This taught me the possibility every lesson has to be powerful, exciting, and an amazing opportunity for students to connect with their learning. Moving forward into my upcoming practicum for EDUC 491 there are a few goals I have and areas I would like to continue to develop. During this last practicum I was able to create 2 sets of 3 linked lessons. However, in 491 I would like to continue my practice with designing linked lessons and incorporate more areas for cross curricular connections. During my Math and English Language Arts linked lessons I was able to make connections to Art, but going forward I would like to expand on this. I think that cross curricular connections allow for students to form deeper understandings of their learning which is a strong asset. I would also like to further practice and explore assessment. I am very happy to have completed my EDUC 490 practicum and am incredibly excited for all the learning to come in my EDUC 491 practicum. Here’s to an exciting new chapter in the New Year!
