For most teacher candidates, their school Practicum is the centre of their B.Ed. year. Your role is to assist them in entering and completing their Practicum, where they will engage in the process of constructing and documenting professional knowledge. The course emphasizes understanding and improving learning and teaching, and associated classroom practices. It has many facets, and your role is complex and demanding. The rewards, however, are many.

Please be aware that each PROF 190 section will be unique in its needs and concerns.The course outline is common, and it represents a contract between our Faculty and the candidates. We all have to honour the course outline and course requirements. No two sections will be doing exactly the same things in the same ways at the same time. However, in PROF 190, we will all be using the same set of readings, activities and ideas as we focus on recurring themes during our on-campus and in-school sessions. These themes are professional learning communities, classroom management, instruction, learning environments, assessment -- all tied up in the notion of working to become a professional learning community. There are typically nearly 20 sections of PROF190, with 20 instructors and 20 sets of candidates. Your task as an instructor is to respond appropriately to your group's needs and concerns, while ensuring that all course and program requirements are met. The course is meant to enable teacher candidates to become more reflective in their practice, and classes are focussed on helping them move toward that goal.

Below are some possible areas for you to explore with your own group. Implementation of these ideas will vary from section to section. Some topics may not be explored at all; some are required.

Who Are We as Educators?

Complete a classroom activity to enable candidates to get to know each other by school group. Some candidates have expressed discomfort with too personal an approach, and that is why the Group Professional Resume is a more effective tool. For a Group Professional Resume, candidates focus on elements of their experience that relate most to teaching and learning:qualifications, other skills, interests. Have groups record these and celebrate the talent in the room.

Observing and Implementing Classroom Management Strategies

Each candidate has read and written a short review of a classroom management book. Develop a way to share their learning in small groups, and compare the books on September 21, 2012.

Develop a bank of good management ideas and continue to add to it. Use the PROF 190/PRAC 190 course pack and web site for ideas and information. We are focussing on management, rather than discipline, which is only one facet of effectively managing a classroom.

Use the weekly in-school meeting questions to help candidates focus their thinking and learning. Please review these with your candidates prior to their Practica. Each week, candidates will be bringing specific information from their own classroom learning to their weekly meetings with their peers, in order to build on their learning. You need to alert them to look ahead each week, in order to prepare for the weekly meeting ahead. The questions are on the course website and in their Practicum Pages in the PROF 190 course pack. Each school group will email you the notes from their in-school PROF 190 meetings each week.

Understanding Program Requirements

Use the Practicum Handbook and Faculty of Education online Calendar for 2012-13 for information here. All P/J candidates will have received access to all Ministry of Education curriculum documents for all elementary subjects. P/J candidates travel to curriculum classes in cohorts.

 

Reflective Practice: Action Research.

All candidates are required to complete an Action Research project by the due dates: January 25 or April 5, 2013. Please ensure that all members of your section understand the ethical concerns that arise in this professional inquiry assignment. Review the Proposal and Consent Form with your section, so that all understand the assignment and ethical concerns.

Action Research

Each candidate confers with his/her instructor as well as Associate Teacher(s) prior to beginning the project. Candidates hand in their completed Proposal and Consent Form along with their completed papers, after their projects are finished. These Proposal and Consent Forms include necessary signatures from instructors and Associate Teachers, and show all sources of information used by the candidate for the project. You need to remind candidates of the list of information sources they may not use: surveys, interviews, photos, video, etc. Direct candidates to the Rubric for this assignment prior to the beginning of the projects.Candidates need to use the template for their reports. This template is easily accessed from our PROF 190 website.

At the conclusion of the course, all Action Research Proposal and Consent Forms must be submitted to the coordinator for PROF 190, to hold for the Education Research Ethics Board for audit. Please ensure that you have spent time discussing ethics concerns with your section, so that the audit does not turn up any problems. The proposals will be held for one year.

Becoming Reflective Practitioners: the Professional Portfolio.

Each candidate is required to complete a professional portfolio. The courseware pack provides some guidance for them and you. There are several web sites, as well, for guidance. Access these through the PROF 190 web site.

Lesson Planning: Where do we come in?

Many candidates will have prepared many lesson plans prior to their year here; others will have little or no experience in formal lesson planning. Each P/J curriculum instructor will have spent significant time showing and explaining and teaching candidates a variety of appropriate lesson plans prior to their Practica. If there are still concerns about lesson planning, direct the candidate(s) to the appropriate Curriculum instructor for support. You should have to spend no time on this in PROF 190. Candidates may want to use pages from their Practicum Binder as resources for lesson planning. One or more lesson and its accompanying reflection should be put in the candidate’s portfolio.

Candidates' curriculum instructors here have provided many examples of appropriate lesson plans. Most current textbooks and other resource packages include excellent teaching guides, as do all current reading, writing and mathematics programs. Send candidates to the curriculum instructors for support. Literacy and math and other curriculum instructors in P/J here have provided candidates with a variety of appropriate, current lesson plans, and candidates should be using these and not spending hours creating something “new”.

Candidates should not be Googling and using content area lesson plans from Minnesota or Dallas or even Charlottetown. The Social Studies program for Grade 4 in Manitoba will not be appropriate in Ontario, for example.

 

It is a good idea to sit down with each candidate at some point during their practicum, to share ideas and insights about one of their lesson plans. At this point in their professional career, candidates need more detailed lesson plans on paper than they are likely to see their Associate Teachers using. We are stressing professional learning and Annual Learning Plans. Candidates need to become comfortable in writing down lesson ideas, implementing them, and then debriefing with a professional: you and each Associate Teacher can promote this goal.

Unit Planning:FYI

Direct candidates to curriculum instructors with questions about unit planning.  

The Education Library has lots of unit materials, as does the Teachers Resource Centre, housed in McArthur Hall (for candidates in Limestone and Algonquin Lakeshore Catholic boards only). Education Library Staff provide workshops and support for candidates looking for curriculum support.

We should try to discourage Associate Teachers from suggesting that candidates should be "creating" entire curriculum units at this stage in their professional learning.

  

Course PROF 190/PRAC 190 Binder

Direct your candidates to spend some time going through the course pack/PRAC 190 Binder. The package contains the required readings for the course, as well as appropriate pages for each candidate to use during the Practica: focus questions for lesson reflections, and the sets of questions for each in-school Weekly Meeting. The website contains lots of links to support several years of planning, classroom management, and general information about classroom teaching – in Ontario and around the world.