I've just put in my preferences for my Professional Experience 3 placement next semester. In the interest of a well-rounded set of practical experiences, I've requested a placement in either of the senior secondary colleges in Launceston — Launceston College and Newstead College. I did put both down as my first and second preferences for prac. this semester, but didn't reckon with exams, or whatever else made them decline prac. students (or, maybe, just me). Once I have some senior secondary experience, I'm planning on doing my internship at one of the private schools, hopefully Scotch Oakburn College or the Launceston Church Grammar School.
If everything goes to plan, I'll have had six weeks in public secondary schools (7-10), four weeks in a public senior secondary school (11-12), and about seven weeks in a private secondary school. I'll have covered the full secondary age range (12 y.o. to 17 y.o.) from a range of socio-economic backgrounds in both the public and private systems.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
A Second First Lesson
Today I took my first CAD lesson as teacher. I'd intended for the students to use this first lesson to being the self-paced tutorials for SketchUp, the program we'll be using. Rather than start the tutorials, most of the class had them finished half way through the lesson.
As a stop gap, I drew some simple figures on the board (just a few basic roof, door and window shapes) for the ones who finished earlier than I was expecting to complete and asked the students that finished even those to model items from around the class room. The main thing that I got out of this lesson is the need to have extension work planned and ready to go — making up extension problems one at a time doesn't work nearly so well when it's the whole class.
Feed back from my colleague teachers includes the need for me work on getting and maintaining the students' attention (e.g. when giving instruction) as I have a tendancy to try to talk over the top of them which doesn't work very well as a) I'm not loud enough, and b) they listening. I also need to make sure that I keep them on task.
This post was written ex post facto.
As a stop gap, I drew some simple figures on the board (just a few basic roof, door and window shapes) for the ones who finished earlier than I was expecting to complete and asked the students that finished even those to model items from around the class room. The main thing that I got out of this lesson is the need to have extension work planned and ready to go — making up extension problems one at a time doesn't work nearly so well when it's the whole class.
Feed back from my colleague teachers includes the need for me work on getting and maintaining the students' attention (e.g. when giving instruction) as I have a tendancy to try to talk over the top of them which doesn't work very well as a) I'm not loud enough, and b) they listening. I also need to make sure that I keep them on task.
This post was written ex post facto.
Monday, October 02, 2006
The Teaching Begins
The second week of PE2 began with my colleague teacher off ill. This was a little inconvenient, but everything went well with the relief teacher. In the science lesson first up, the students had plenty of work to do on their inquiry projects which are due this Friday, but we could only use the computer lab for the first half of the period. This left some of them with little to do for half a lesson, but on the whole, they were on task and much more settled than they were during the lesson I taught last week.
During the two periods between recess and lunch, we had maths and both classes went quite well. Some of the students got their assignments on perimeter, area, volume and surface area handed in, whilst others will [hopefully] have them finished for my colleague teacher's return tomorrow. Many of the students that hadn't finished managed to get it polished off, and all of them worked relatively well, so it was good.
During the final period, I took my first IT class. As the grade tens were attending a whole grade event, I had the ninth grade students from mine and two other classes. As it was a one-off, I took them through a Google Earth my colleague teacher had ready. The students has to locate a number of features ranging from relatively easy (just type it in a Google Earth will find it for you) to more challenging (such as streets in towns Google Earth doesn't know about). All up I thought that it went pretty well, especially with the potential for disturbance posed by the mixture of three classes together.
After school ended there was a general staff meeting which, while interesting, I have no intention of writing about here.
During the two periods between recess and lunch, we had maths and both classes went quite well. Some of the students got their assignments on perimeter, area, volume and surface area handed in, whilst others will [hopefully] have them finished for my colleague teacher's return tomorrow. Many of the students that hadn't finished managed to get it polished off, and all of them worked relatively well, so it was good.
During the final period, I took my first IT class. As the grade tens were attending a whole grade event, I had the ninth grade students from mine and two other classes. As it was a one-off, I took them through a Google Earth my colleague teacher had ready. The students has to locate a number of features ranging from relatively easy (just type it in a Google Earth will find it for you) to more challenging (such as streets in towns Google Earth doesn't know about). All up I thought that it went pretty well, especially with the potential for disturbance posed by the mixture of three classes together.
After school ended there was a general staff meeting which, while interesting, I have no intention of writing about here.
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