Practicum Plan

I have listed many learning goals on my Practicum Plan and I would like to achieve all these before the end of the semester. My first goal is use differentiated instruction more in the classroom. In my classroom so far I have used a Smart Board every day. In the upcoming weeks I want to learn how to use the Smart Board in different ways to teach my lesson or my mentor teacher’s lesson plans. Another goal I have is improving my classroom management. My classroom management has improved a lot over the first few weeks of teaching. At first I had a lot of problems with students having side conversations while I was teaching. I realize now that when you first get a group of students you must be very strict then you can back off a little bit once you have earned their respect. Now that my classroom management is improving it is easier to ask the students off topic questions then relate it to the material and keep the students on task.

One thing I added to my plan was create more organized lesson plans and have back up plans for my lessons. I planned a whole lesson on the American Civil War; I was informed by my teacher that we would be in the computer lab the whole week. When I arrived on school on the following Monday I was told we would not be in the computer lab at all and I would have to start my lesson today and redo all of my lesson plans. It was frustrating at the time but a good lesson for me. It taught me that I need to have a back plan in case something like this would happen again. Overall I have been on a good pace with completing my activities. I would like to get a lot more done before Spring Break so I can focus on my weakness in actual teaching.

Characteristics of a Novice Teacher

All ten of the characteristics of a novice teacher are very important to becoming a full service teacher. At WVU the Benedum Teaching Program has given me a chance to demonstrate and complete all of these characteristics.

Characteristic 7 states: We believe that the novice teacher should effectively integrate content and pedagogy. I believe this is one of the most important characteristics for a teacher because you must know your content and know it well. The students test teachers on daily and have many questions that you as a teacher should be able to answer. Content knowledge is also important because you must prove to the students that you know your content, this will lead to respect in the classroom.

For characteristic 7 I will be using my Unit Plan from my C & I class. This unit plan consist of 6 lesson plans on the 13 colonies. I enjoyed creating this unit because I was free to use any topic that I wanted. I got a chance to make my own worksheets and I created a final assessment. For this unit I made a test at the end and the students did fairly well on it.

Characteristic 9 states: We believe that the novice teacher should be aware of and have respect for human diversity. This something I did not have a lot of experience with at my first PDS. First school was primary white students, but now in my second PDS the student body is very diverse. A novice teacher must be aware of this because we do not know where we will end up teaching at. It might be in an area where all the students are a different race than you.

For Characteristic 9 I will be using my controversial current events lesson plan from my C & I class. My lesson plan was on the stoning of women in Iran. It was very interesting to the students because they could not believe that people still do this. The lesson end with the famous story of "The Lottery" which create a lot of classroom discussion.