Teacher candidates meet as Professional Learning Communities in associate school groups, during school hours, each week during the Practicum. This time is devoted to collaborative work on issues arising in the school and related to PRAC/PROF 190.

This is your first year as part of a teaching professional learning community. You will be sharing ideas, observations and understandings about your own classroom practices and the teaching, routines and procedures of your school. You will be using questions provided here to focus your weekly discussions, and emailing your ideas and concerns to your PROF 190 instructor. 

Your conversations are always held in a professional manner, with no identification of individuals and no inappropriate comments about other professionals, students or other people in your school or any other school.

Take your PRAC 190 Binder to your weekly meetings -- and to school every day! You will have lesson plans, journal notes, observations and information to share at your meetings each week. 

Begin to consider topics/questions for your Action Research Project as you engage in conversations in your meetings: your topic may well emerge from your weekly discussions with your peers.

Prior to Each Weekly Meeting:

• Review the list of questions for each week, to learn the focus for your school group's Professional Learning Community meetings.
• Your work for Weekly Meeting #1, and most others, needs to be completed before your next meeting.  Please find the Weekly Meetings questions in your PRAC 190 Pages.
• Use the questions below to begin your weekly practicum discussions, and email your meeting notes to your Prof 190 instructor.

Please note: the topics and questions serve as a starting point and are not meant to limit the scope of your discussions in your Professional Learning Community. Additional issues, topics and questions will likely arise.

 

Week 1: Initial observations, initial days

• Use a strategy recommended by Judy Jablon to record your observations in your Associate Teacher's classroom. Your focus for these observations is these categories from Gary Borich: Learning Climate, Classroom Routines, and Task Orientation of students. Describe the strategy for observing that you used, and share your observations in your meeting.
• Describe the situations and times when you were able to observe.
• What suggestions can you make for your future use of these strategies for observing students?
• How does your Associate Teacher handle classroom routines? Share your Associate's best ideas.
• What evidence of a professional learning community have you observed among school staff? How might you become involved?
• Additional thoughts, questions, issues raised by the group.
• Looking ahead: Your Week 2 meeting will focus on your observations about classroom management. Check the questions before you adjourn today's meeting.

Week 2: Observing Classroom Management

• Create a map of the classroom showing details. Explain how the classroom arrangement is designed for student learning.
• Share your observations about the most effective management strategies your Associate Teacher typically uses. Explain why you think these strategies are effective. Do they match ideas presented in your summer reading or our readings on management?
• Find the form for creating a Student Profile in the document Learning for All. Use it to create a profile for one student in your Associate Teacher's class. Use a fictitious name. Keep all information you have noted completely confidential. Do not use information from the student's OSR, parents, previous report cards or other confidential information, just use the least intrusive information-gathering that you can, understanding that you are a guest in the classroom. Use the profile to help you make decisions about classroom management while you are teaching the class. Find the document at http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/elemsec/speced/LearningforAll2011.pdf.
• Describe the responsibilities your Associate Teacher has outside the classroom, as part of her/his Professional Learning Community. Describe how you are becoming involved.
• Additional thoughts, questions, issues raised by the group.
• Looking ahead: Week 3's meeting's theme is Lesson Planning. Take a look at the questions and implement them during the week ahead.

Week 3: Lesson Planning

• How are you planning lessons for your classroom? Is this approach working well for you?
• What resources are you using from Curriculum instructors at Queen's to assist in lesson planning?
• Which specific lesson planning ideas from your math, literacy, science, arts, phys ed or social studies curriculum courses have you implemented? What did you observe when you used these ideas?
• How are you adapting lessons for the exceptional learners in the class? Did you find the ideas in Learning for All helpful?
• What have you found to be most challenging about planning lessons? How can we all work to support our learning?
• Additional thoughts, questions, issues raised by the group.
• Looking ahead: Next week you will be back at the Faculty of Education. When you return to your school, your  Professional Learning Community will be talking about classroom management and classroom environments at Week 4's meeting.

Week 4: Managing the Environment

• Positive learning environments include these elements: physical layout, atmosphere, routines, responses to student behaviour, effective teaching methods, appropriate learning experiences, interaction with parents and professional learning community. Comment on which of these seems most important for the smooth running of your Associate Teacher's classroom. Why do you think this is the case?
• Make some comparisons among your group's classrooms: which elements are most effective for early primary children? for older students? for everyone?
• What aspects of managing the classroom environment do you find most difficult? Why do you think this is the case? What changes can you make in your own teaching in order to improve this situation?
• What strategies have you or your Associate Teacher used in order to improve the sense of "community" in your practicum classroom? What impediments are there to creating a community of learners?
• Additional thoughts, questions, issues raised by the group.
• Looking ahead: The focus of your conversation next week is Assessment for learning.

Week 5: Assessment for Learning.

• Describe and demonstrate for your group one of the methods your Associate Teacher uses to assess student learning. Do you consider it to be assessment for learning or assessment of learning?
• Describe and demonstrate for your group one method you will use to provide feedback to your students. How does the children's age and stage add special challenges to this aspect of assessing for learning?
• Describe how you/your Associate Teacher assess prior learning in your classroom. What other methods could you use? Try one of these other methods in the week ahead.
• What do you consider to be the most challenging aspect of assessing student learning? How do you plan to deal more effectively with this difficulty?
• Keep some of the lesson materials/assessment materials and your reflections on them, to add to your Professional Portfolio.
• Additional thoughts, questions, issues raised by the group.
• Looking ahead: Next week you will be looking at effective teaching strategies.

Week 6: Instruction

• Describe for your group one instructional idea or lesson, that your Associate used, that seemed very effective. Explain why you think it worked so well.
• Describe one lesson or instructional idea that you used that seemed to be effective. Try to explain why you think it worked well for your students.
• Share one good teaching/learning resource with your group. Explain why you consider it to be "good".
• Describe a literacy or math lesson you taught, in which you used one of the lessons or instructional ideas presented by your math or literacy curriculum instructor. What made the lesson effective or not?
• Describe one teaching "dilemma" that you had to resolve during this practicum round. How did you resolve it? Was your decision a good one?
• Additional thoughts, questions, issues raised by the group.
• Looking ahead: Gather up your materials so that you have them to share with peers on campus in January. Be sure to keep track of materials connected to your Professional Learning Plan to include in your Professional Portfolio.

Weekly Meeting Questions for the Winter Practicum

  

Week 7: Community

• Implement one idea from the learning we did about Classrooms as Communities of Learners. You will be using your observation skills as well as negotiating with your Associate Teacher, in order to select an appropriate strategy relating to classroom community.
• Reflect on the experience of implementing that Classroom Community idea: what outcomes had you anticipated accurately? What outcomes surprised you? What would you change?
• Share your learning about this experience with your group.
• Keep some of the lesson materials and your reflections to add to your Professional Portfolio.
• Additional thoughts, questions, issues raised by the group....
• Looking ahead: Your topic for next week is Instruction. You will be able to try out another teaching/learning idea.

 

 Week 8: Teaching, Instruction

• Implement (try) at least one idea from the learning we did about teaching/instruction: an idea from Marzano or Learning for All, chapter 2 or 6. You will need to negotiate with your Associate Teacher, to choose and use an appropriate lesson idea with your class.
• Reflect on the experience of trying that idea. What outcomes had you anticipated accurately? What outcomes surprised you? What would you do differently next time?
• Keep some of the lesson materials and your reflections n the lesson to add to your Professional Portfolio.
• Share your learning about this experience with your group.
• Additional thoughts, questions, issues raised by the group....
• Looking ahead: Your topic for next week's activities is assessment.

 

Week 9: Assessment

• Try one idea to enable you to assess student work for learning. Talk this over with your Associate Teacher before you try the strategy.
• Reflect on the experience of trying that assessment strategy. What outcomes had you predicted accurately? What outcomes surprised you? What would you do differently next time?
• Keep some of the lesson and assessment materials, and your reflections on them, to add to your Professional Portfolio.
• Share your learning with your group.
• Additional thoughts, questions,issues raised by the group....
• Looking ahead: Final Week of your school practicum!

 

Week 10: So Now We Think....

• What did we try that seemed successful for our students and their learning (community, instruction, assessment)?
• What do we think are reasons for success or non-success?
• What was our best moment?
• What was our best learning experience?
• What are implications for our future learning?