Practicum 2, Week 1

Week 1 went pretty well, considering my youngest little guy at home (Janos) got some kind of stomach flu and was vomiting for the last 3 days.  I think he is getting through it, though and hopefully he'll keep getting better and better.  I taught the grade 4/5, and 5/6 core French classes in the afternoons.  In the last 2 STEP days, I already started teaching them, and used that opportunity to do my Art Lesson Assignment - of course I chose to do finger knitting - which they loved.  Now whenever they see me, they ask if they get to do fingerknitting - but we have many other things to work on.  I decided that for both classes, I would work on a story, a round (a song), and a winter poem that they would be able to perform by week 4.  My AT has been really good at helping me figure out how I'm going to asses them.  I'm also learning how to finally make rubrics (I have to admit, I've been avoiding them all year.)  First I tried using rubric builder dot com - but my AT told me it's for high school - and it should be much more simple so the students understand it.  But it put me in the right direction.  I decided to give them a quiz once per week where we would focus on one verb they are supposed to know.  I started with the verb "avoir" - I reviewed it every single day with the kids - both on the board - so they could see it written; and I got them to write it out, and we said it out loud.  But still 7 of the 21 or 22 kids in each class got none of the answers correct - where others got more than 100% (because I gave a couple of bonus questions).  I made a note of the students who got 0, so that I can make sure to work with them more closely.  One suggestion my AT had, was to put "avoir" on the next quiz, as well as the next verb, and make sure that I work with those students to make sure they get it.  I thought about it, though, and I think what I will do is make the quizzes not worth very much.  There is another written assessment I'll be doing, which is a beautiful main lesson book.  I made the book for them (stapled together about 10 pages of the cheap photocopy paper), and I drew lines on every other page, and left the alternate pages blank for illustrations.  In the main lesson book, I get them to write out things we are working on (we started with the winter poem) and then illustrate it.  I brought in my beautiful coloured pencils and crayons and the kids LOVE using them (I told them they can also use their own).  I think I'll make that worth 80% of their written assessment, and the quizzes will be a total of 20% (there will be 3 in total).  And for their oral assessment, Serge gave me a good idea, when he came to supervise my teaching last week - to keep a checklist so that I can see who is answering all the questions, and that way, I balance it because I see on my list, who isn't talking at all (and so I don't necessarily know if they are getting what we are talking about).  The other part of the oral mark will be their performance of the poem, story and song in week 4. I decided that the way I will assess it, is that in my week 4, We will spend the whole week getting ready for the performance (no quizzes that week), so I will try to run through the performance once or twice each class on Mon, Tues. Wed. and Thurs.  If I focus on 3 to 5 kids each time we run it, I will have an assessment for all of them before Friday, when we perform it for an audience.  I'm assigning the parts on Monday or Tuesday of next week - and they already have the song and the winter poem pretty much memorized because we've been doing it every day last week.  They are pretty excited about the idea of performing, and in the story, they don't actually have too many lines - so I told them I want them to have it memorized by week 3 (they will have march break to review).  I'll let you know how it goes.

I won't be starting my learning wall until week 3, because I'm doing it with my grade 7 & 8 English Classes (and I won't start teaching them until week 3).  I'm most nervous about that - but I'm planning to get all of the planning for that finished this weekend, so that I can let the kids know what is expected of them before they go to March Break.  That way, the Monday after March break, we can hit the ground running :)

Until next week ...