Finished prac

Well I have one more day on prac to make up for the public holiday. I must say I was incredibly lucky to have such an amazing senior teacher as my mentor.  She was an incredibly talented and dedicated teacher.  She was extremely up to date with ICT in her classroom, which was a must considering that its an ipad one to one class that is a must.  One thing I considered while on prac is that there are times with a very challenging class like this one was is that sometimes the need to always use ICT is not always the best option.  Even though we used the technology a lot sometimes the traditional classroom was much more affective. Apps like IXL and reading eggs and sum dog certainly  excelled the learning process for these students though and much much more.

signing off for now Paula

How do I impress my mentor?

So how do I impress and show exciting new ideas to my mentor when she is up to date with ICTs like this school I’m on practicum at.  What an amazing mentor I have, she is incredibly engaging with the students, has a great time with them and encourages a lot of higher order thinking and encourages them to use a lot of ICT throughout the day.  Students use many iPad applications to develop their research skills and create with.  I have spent many hours trying to find something different to use, not necessarily to impress her but to show her I’m keen, serious and dedicated about teaching.  On the up side wow I’m learning heaps.

ICTs for learning vs hands on learning

I understand how learning can be enhanced greatly with ICTs.  It helps students to think for themselves, engage in higher order thinking through important investigation skills and develop necessary abilities that will be of great importance for their future.  Most jobs students will have when they finish school possibly haven’t even been thought of yet.  So yes they do need to develop these essential skills, however for a lot of things students still need to use hands on concrete material to develop understanding.  A large proportion of students are VAK (visual, auditory and kinaesthetic) learners which justifies why they need to use hands on learning just as much.  A balance of both is necessary.

students who use ICTs compared to those who don’t

Interesting Patricia

Well after spending a week in grade 6 with students who have one to one iPads has been very interesting to be involved in.  They are very capable in using the internet well for research, programs such as educreations for a flipped classroom and creating multimodals with iMovie and others programs.  Having the opportunity to be able to also work with students who don’t use ICTs all the time, it is apparent how far advanced students who use ICTs all the time compared to the ones who don’t. This raises the question of how important it is to transform students learning with ICTs or they really are being left behind in the future.

Exhausted already

Well one week of practicum done and already exhausted.  Very big week full of a lot of behaviour management and pressure of completing assessments.  Starting the new week with an English assessment to finish and a new Mathematics unit to explicitly teach.  This week will be just as big with so many interruptions; sports day on Thursday and an author visit on Friday.  The intense pace at school I can handle, however to come home and have pressure of three huge assignments to complete also is where the stress hits home.  I look forward to the end of this semester and a quick refreshing break before it all starts again.

Educreations App

Patricia and I have been lucky enough to be at a great school with laptops and iPads that are used for a large majority of their learning time.  It will be very interesting to observe the different style of learning.  Already the teacher beside my room mentioned how you can tell the difference between students who use technology a lot and those who don’t.  Will be good to see this in action.

My mentor has shown me quickly how they use an easy App called Educreations. A simple program that the teacher films direct instruction onto for students to watch individually.  I can see why this can work if done properly.  If a student is absent they can easily catch up, if they’re not quite sure they can review it again and they can use for revision for a test.  This does mean that the teacher needs to put in the hours to be organised.  Looking forward to having a go at this in the real world.

Paula xx

Organised?

Well prac starts bright and early tomorrow morning.  Looking forward to 3 weeks full of teaching and learning.  In order for this to run successfully I MUST be organised.  My weekend has been full of preparing an introduction lesson for my students and organising resources and a lesson plan for my first Math lesson on Monday.  This is all prepared now including a challenge game for everyday to motivate students.

Todays is about making sure my household and own children will run smoothly.  Today is baking, cooking meals, organising my kids to be picked up after school safely and getting them to their own sports.  We have our parade first thing in the morning, staff meeting after school.  During my prac their are a lot of things happening we have the school athletics day, public holidays which need to be made up and I’m sure their will be heaps more things thrown at us as the time passes by.

So close to being organised for a early night in this household and a solid sleep, ready for a successful fresh start.

Paula xx

Flipped classroom

What a wonderful start to my prac experience.  Have already been given the opportunity to be completely prepared to start teaching first thing Monday morning.  But more importantly, I have been given the opportunity to watch a flipped classroom in action.  Better still I am able to create my own flipped classroom in Geography for the second week, can’t wait. So excited hopefully I can pull it off.  Look forward to learning from it though and a great opportunity to fully involve myself into a lot of ICT use.  ICTs will be a very big part of this prac and I look forward to learning from experts in action.

Cheers Paula Hall

Prac excitment

Well  I will start prac on Monday.  So excited about it, look forward to three weeks full of exciting interactions with students at the school, colleges from university and mentors.  Already my mentor has impressed me, she spent two hours with me for my induction, setting me up for a big week full of learning and teaching.

Decided to create an introductive movie book for my students to learn about me and then ask them to share their favourite subject, sport and what they want to do when they leave school. My thinking behind this is that if I share with them they will share with me, this is developing respect also while helping to get to know every student in the class.

Look forward to a great three week experience  at a wonderful school with lots of learning.

xxx Paula

connect.ed

Connect.ed was an interesting and helpful professional development experience.  I am a parent of 3 children, 1 x 15 year old boy, 1 x 11 year old boy and 1 x 8 year old girl.  As a productive parent I monitor my children’s use on the internet.  My husband and I always have the computer in a public area to watch what is being done when the children on the computer.  We always talk to our children about cyber safe practices both at school and at home.  My oldest boys are also continually reminded about setting an example for younger children at our house. This is for everything including internet and privacy safety.  As parents we also lead by example.

Connect.ed helped me recognise that my understandings and beliefs about cyber bullying etc. are true.  It also made me think further about the fact that as a teacher we need to model and teach in depth ways to help students.  Technology is wonderful we just need everyone using it properly, that is our jobs as teachers. Connect.ed also helped me with valuable resources which I will continually be revisiting.  These will be considered and used in my future teaching.