Samantha Clewell ED 128 Reflections on Practicums 1.

Junior Achievement- Pat Kingfields 1st grade classroom at Olmsted Elementary Urbandale CSD Professional Learning & Ethical Practice (Standard #9) How did you engage in ongoing professional learning and use evidence to continually evaluate your teaching? Describe and explain the effects of your choices and actions on others (learners, families, other professionals, and the community). How did you adapt your teaching practices to meet the needs of each learner? Throughout my time in Junior Achievement, it was a great starting off point for my future in teaching. When working with the materials provided by Junior Achievement, it was a great foundation to plan the lessons. When planning for my lessons in Junior Achievement, I used the lesson plan outline to adapt and add activities to the lesson for my students. When going in to implement the lessons in the classroom, I was always aware of my students and those who were willing to participate and those who kept to themselves. When the students would have time for independent activities, I would walk around the classroom and check in with those students who may not have participated in the whole group discussion. This was a great way in which to assess the quieter students in the classroom to see if they are comprehending the material being taught. The unit in which I was teaching included families, needs and wants, jobs, and places of business. This allowed the learners to connect the lessons taught to their everyday lives and have conversations with their family members about the different jobs they do and the importance of school. Leadership & Collaboration (Standard #10) How did you seek appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for student learning to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals, or community members to ensure learner growth? How did you advance the profession as a result of your practicum teaching experiences? Through the Junior Achievement program, students had several opportunities to feel ownership within the classroom. The lesson outlines provided supplemental cross-curricular activities that could be added to the lesson to enhance learning. One activity that I particularly enjoyed was the first lesson when the students had to identify important aspects of their family and what makes them unique. I provided each student with a blank paper doll for them to draw inside their different family members and what makes them special. This was a great activity for the students because they were able to visually represent themselves in a comfortable atmosphere. Junior Achievement provided me with the opportunity to lead a class and implement five individual lessons to a class of first graders. I learned that although the curriculum you will be provided with can be a great resource, there are multiple entry points to implementing a lesson and differentiating to accommodate your students needs to the best of your ability.

2. Crestview- 2nd grade Brooke Dey West Des Moines CSD Professional Learning & Ethical Practice (Standard #9) How did you engage in ongoing professional learning and use evidence to continually evaluate your teaching? Describe and explain the effects of your choices and actions on others (learners, families, other professionals, and the community). How did you adapt your teaching practices to meet the needs of each learner? For our lesson at Crestview, we were able to use the social studies curriculum binder for the West Des Moines CSD to provide my group members as well as myself with some insight and ideas for our lesson plan. We also kept in contact with our cooperating teacher and were able to observe her classroom as well as ask her what part of the Japan unit she would like us to teach. The second grade does a large unit on Japan every spring, and our lesson was on origami. In our original plan we were going to introduce origami by reading aloud a short story about origami and where it originated from. We had the materials for the origami, but the books had been accidently forgotten behind. It was somewhat difficult to try to manage a classroom that we had only been in once before, but I benefited from this practicum because I had had this teacher and students the previous semester for my practicum. For the origami lesson, we divided into three stations in which we each had a different animal we were making with small groups of students. To introduce the lesson, we gave a piece of paper to each student and we provided step- by step instructions on how to make a cat to familiarize the students with paper folding. Our practicum teacher assisted us during our observation period in forming small groups for our lesson. The small group setting provided students with the opportunity to collaborate with one another when they became stuck. I would provide additional support if needed when students were unable to provide their peers with the help they called for. Leadership & Collaboration (Standard #10) How did you seek appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for student learning to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals, or community members to ensure learner growth? How did you advance the profession as a result of your practicum teaching experiences? When we had decided as a group the lesson we were going to do, we divided the responsibilities up pretty easily by having each of us teach one animal to make to a small group of students and rotate the groups. Small groups were essential to having productive learners and keeping classroom management issues under control. We were able to communicate with our cooperating teacher about how the lesson went afterwards as well as receive feedback from her on ways to improve the lesson and constructive criticism for future teaching purposes. There were multiple opportunities for us to collaborate with our group as well as our cooperating teacher to provide students with a quality lesson that required critical thinking.