Here we are at the end of Block two of the B. ED program and I have to say I am feeling very grounded in this experience. Being allowed the privilege to test out my own teaching in our first practicum has really shown me that not only can I do this whole”teaching” thing but it feels really good. I titled this blog post; “So much to do and so little time… left!” because that’s exactly how it feels right now. Since we only have three blocks left with two of them being completed over the summer and our last block in September being taken up mainly by our long practicum I know this time is going to slip by before we know it. So, as we ramp up for the last hump of our education rollercoaster (a fun one, might I add) the inquiry approach I am taking with me moving forward is really making my decisions based on student needs. What I mean by that is to try and hone my skills for knowing how to read my students better and developing skills around when I can tell learning is being done. I want to work on this because during my first practicum that is one of the things that challenged me because having never taught before I was mainly focused on what I was teaching and how I was teaching it but I was missing the piece of “okay but do the students get it?” in my perspective. I did have the chance to do a few assessments and give feedback along the way but knowing when to spend more time on certain areas before moving on if the students need it is something I want to pay attention to moving forward.

In my reflections from block one I was really focused on lesson planning and exploring the curriculum. I feel as if I have a good handle on formal lesson planning and I understand how pacing is very important to making sure you stay on track. Practicing my lesson plans also made me realize all the work that can go into a single hour lesson and that it really helps to collaborate and look at different resources for inspiration. My main inquiry though form block one was “what is my spin?” this question was mainly based around how was I going to approach bring content to students. I believe that I have established that I love fun and hands on lessons because I feel that the students are so much more engaged that way. I also discovered that it helped to tell students exactly what you want them to work on whether it was questioning, observing , describing and so on. Of course I am only at the beginning of my teaching journey so I do not think this inquiry is exactly figured out but I have definitely made some headway on it.

Coming back to my inquiry for block two: Knowing when learning is taking place I would like to develop this into more than just an assessment piece. Why I say this is because of course when you give your students an opportunity to show their learning individually you’re are going to see if they are getting it or not but what I am hoping to learn is how to catch this before you are at a final assessment and during lessons. I want to challenge myself around this because I found during my lessons that when students were verbally saying this is easy or easily answering questions during a class discussion I felt like they were getting it. What I was reminded of though by my awesome CT was that even though I was hearing from the majority I was not hearing from everyone. So, I need to learn to make sure to create opportunities for everyone to grasp the learning and switch it up to make sure no learner is left behind. Going further, I few goals I have for the upcoming blocks are; to have more movement in the classroom, work on engaging all learners as they are all different and branching out and experimenting with how I shape my lessons. I am overall just looking forward to learning more and trying out new things for the following blocks and I cannot wait!

I am starting to feel like this mug is more and more true every day, I still have tons of work to do but we are getting started! This was gifted to me by the Strong Start Program in our district, It says “this is what an awesome educator looks like ” 🙂