November 21 - December 16

Some of you will be in the same classes as you were in October, and some of you will be in new classes and possibly be with new associate teachers. You will see below that the topic of Assessment is suggested to be included every week, as this tends to be a topic of ongoing interest. Use the questions below to initiate your weekly practicum discussions.

Please note: These topics and questions serve as starting points for your weekly 2-hour meetings and are not meant to limit the scope of your discussions. It is expected that additional points, issues, topics, and questions will arise from your daily classroom experiences.

Weeks 5 to 8: Ongoing Themes

Assessment, Teaching/Learning Strategies, Classroom Management 

• What methods of assessment do your host teachers use in the various courses you are involved with?

• What is the role of standardized testing in the school? e.g., grades involved, courses/subjects involved, time of the year, impact/involvement of other subject areas

• How is assessment adapted for exceptional learners as well as for other diverse students?

• How is group work evaluated? 

• How are report card grades determined?

Week 5: Assessment  (November 21 - 25)

• Describe and demonstrate for your group one of the methods your Associate Teacher(s) use to assess student learning. Do you consider it to be assessment for learning or assessment of learning?

• Describe and demonstrate for your group one of the methods you will use to provide feedback to your students. How does the age and stage of the students add special challenges to this aspect of assessing for learning?

• Describe how you/your Associate Teacher(s) 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?

Week 6: Effective Teaching Strategies (November 28 - December 2)

• Describe your most effective teaching strategy. Explain why you think it "worked" for your students.

• Describe your least effective teaching strategy and explain why you think it was not appropriate for your students.

• Describe a lesson you taught, in which you used one of the lessons or instructional ideas presented by one of your curriculum instructors. What made this lesson effective or not so effective, in your opinion.

• Does your teaching "work" for all students in your class? Why do you think this?

• How does your Associate Teacher(s) select students to work in cooperative groups? How do you select students for cooperative learning?

• Describe some positive and negative aspects of having your students work cooperatively.

• Explain how you dealt with negative moments, when your class was in cooperative learning groups. How do you ensure that all students in groups are learning?

Week 7: Managing the Environment (December 5-9)

• 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 gr. 9/10 students? for gr. 11/12 students? For Academic vs Applied, 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(s) used in order to improve the sense of "community" in your practicum classroom? What impediments are there to creating a community of learners?

• What students do you find difficult to teach? Why?

• How can you try to ensure that your lessons are not racist, not sexist and not heterosexist?

 Week 8: So Now I Think….. (December 12-16)

• Describe your biggest professional "aha moment" during the Fall Practicum.  What made it so important for your professional learning?

• List and explain 2 or 3 items that you consider you need to focus on during the Winter Term, in order to foster your professional learning. Why are these important to you? Have you added them to your Professional Learning Plan?

• Describe your biggest teaching/learning challenge during your Fall Practicum weeks.

•  Describe your happiest moment during your Fall Practicum weeks. What can you learn from this?

• What aspects of the in-school discussions were problematic? How could these things be improved?

• What did you find most useful about the weekly  in-school discussions?

• Which resource people from the school have been able to join your meetings over the 8 weeks of practicum?

• Consider/share ways of wrapping things up with the classes you are teaching as well as with your associate teachers, especially if you will not be with the same classes/associates in February/March.