3 Weeks of Learning how to Teach

I thought that being away from the classroom would give me more personal free time. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The 3 weeks at Kingston flew by extremely quickly. This is probably because of the many projects, assignments and reflections that we all have to do. Teacher’s college is starting to get a bit repetitive in my opinion, not that I am not enjoying my time here, but sometimes it does get a bit dull. 

There were much praise and talk about the rubric in some of my classes. At this point in time, I am still not sure that creating a ‘GOOD’ rubric is worth the time of a teacher. I know from a lot of teachers that are already teaching, rubrics are not the most useful thing for assessment. I know that rubrics give students ideas of what to aim for, however, if we are talking about an inquiry or DI based learning, rubrics seems to be going in the opposite direction (giving too much instruction). Also, people say that rubrics give students a good feedback on what they require to improve. To be completely honest, I don’t think this is correct at all. I find that rubrics (even decent ones) are very vague and lacks specific problems that tackle a specific students. For me, I find that giving a student a ‘simple’ rubric is good enough. Just provide them with a simple point system in each criteria (with brief description); no need to make a HUGE chart with 20-30 boxes. During marking, teacher should give quick and informative comments RIGHT on the student’s paper. I find that this is more beneficial to the student as he/she can pinpoint exactly what and where they were incorrect. They will also feel a closer connection with the teacher since these are not ‘generic’ messages circled on a piece of paper.

I attended STAO last week and it was phenomenal. I have gotten so much demos and possible activities to do with the students; too much in fact it will take me awhile to compile them all! It will be useful content for the site that some of us in the Physics Curr course are trying to put up. Ended up getting a free Physics 11 textbook at the conference, which was a bonus! However, it isn’t too useful since the school that I am doing my practicum is still using the old one! I have never attended a conference before, but this was definitely a good experience as I have learned so much! The presenters at STAO were all so enthusiastic about teaching! I was delighted to see one of the science teachers at my placement do an AMAZING presentation with science demos! It provided me with quick small demos to keep the students on the edge of their seats! Also sat in one of the presentations talking about having an inquiry based Physics 11 and 12 classrooms. It talked about the PEOE which is just POE with an extra ‘E’ for explanation. Thanks Tom : ), I knew exactly what they were talking about when they whipped out the page with the Predict, Explain, Observe, Explain. However, they did add something on top which was the Fishbone idea. Where students develop their own procedure for an experiment/lab. They did say that in the beginning most of the students are not comfortable, however, after sometime, they actually enjoy it more and learning becomes ‘fun’.  I am not sure if I’ll be ready to implement this in a classroom at this point, it is a very risky/time consuming process where I can see a lot of students rejecting. However, the reward is also quite high!

That is all for now, as I must get back to assignments and presentations! I guess I will share more tomorrow in class? : )