Educators value the success of all students. Educators care for students and act in their best interests.
Carly Lorntsen
Practicum Sample Lesson Plan Reflection
Education 391: Experiential Practicum
University of Northern British Columbia
Throughout my three-week experiential practicum, I learned an exceptionally large number of new concepts, techniques, and methods with the profession of teaching. Being placed in a kindergarten classroom brought me brand new knowledge, joy, encouragement, and dedication. I really focused on building strong and concrete relationships with the students while working one-on-one with each student to demonstrate the importance of time and patience so that each student felt safe, comfortable, and loved in their learning environment. It was my very first-time setting foot in a classroom and having the opportunity to teach, and it was an incredible feeling to swap positions of being a student for numerous years to teacher. This is a lived experience that I will remember for so many years to come.
I have decided to reflect upon the very last kindness lesson that I taught the kindergarten students. In summary, I created a kindness unit for the subject of English – Language Arts to allow the kindergarten students to explore social and emotional learning. Recognizing that kindness is indeed one of the most important qualities to have in an individual, I believed that this would be a unit that could help them in the present and future. Prior to this last lesson, I had created a ‘bucket filler’ and ‘bucket dipper’ chart distinguishing the differences between kind and unkind behavior to be placed in the classroom for the students’ reference. We practiced our writing skills by the students copying my writing of ‘you are…’ statements throughout the weeks and gifting them to loved ones leading to this last lesson on kindness. For my last lesson on kindness, I had the students be a ‘rainbow in someone else’s cloud’ by having each student create a cloud for a loved one while writing kind words on colorful rainbow strips describing that person. Students loved copying my writing of the ‘you are…’ statements that they remembered from prior lessons, so I passed out my statements so that they could continue to practice their writing along with my writing. This shifted the lesson in progress as I did not originally think that my writing of ‘you are…’ statements played a huge role in their learning but in fact, it did. All students expressed how they enjoyed using my writing to practice, which resulted in me continuing with this technique. Therefore, in this moment, I felt that I was demonstrating standard one of the Professional British Columbia Teacher Standards in which educators value the success of all students, and educators care for students while acting in their best interests. In this moment, I felt appreciated, and my teaching was making a difference.
After the kindergarten students wrote their kind words, cut, and glued their clouds and rainbow strips to create wonderful written art pieces, my coaching teacher decided to hang each individual students’ work in the hallway close to the kindergarten classroom while taking photographs to share on her classroom ‘Dojo’ app for the parents of the students to see the work that their student teacher Ms. Lorntsen had taught and completed with them. I felt that this was an effective and beneficial lesson for the kindergarten students, and they all seemed to be so proud of their work while I was very proud of them, as well. I am extremely happy that my last lesson for my experiential practicum went well, and I feel that I learned a great amount leading to this point. I learned from mistakes I made in prior lessons, made immediate changes, respected the feedback that my coaching teacher had for me after each lesson, and each prior mistake led me to this lesson where substantial growth was witnessed in just three short weeks.
LETTERS FROM STUDENTS I WAS GIFTED THE OPPORTUNITY TO TEACH:
