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Dominique Hache

Teaching Practicum
Symposium Paper
January 13, 2017

Linking Theory to Practice: a Reflection

During my first field placement, I was tasked with teaching grades six to eight in
Language Arts, among other classes. In each of my classes, I was teaching demographics of
students who were largely far below grade level in the areas of both reading and writing. In my
first two weeks of teaching, most of my lessons followed traditional formats as I gradually took
on the role of full-time teacher, getting my feet wet as I discovered what it was like to teach and
manage a class for a full hour. Truthfully, I found that taking the traditional approach was
frustrating due to lack of engagement, participation, successful learning, etc. I knew I wanted to
be the teacher who did not rely solely on worksheets, enforce strict reading times with texts the
students were uninterested in, follow traditional approaches to literacy, etc. Thankfully, this stint
did not last long and I assumed the full-time position rather quickly with the freedom to design
my own lesson plans and have my shot at executing them which turned out to be both
consistently experimental and greatly successful, though there were some less than successful
days.
Upon doing so, in each of my classes, I noticed that, especially in the middle school
setting, dynamic instruction is a must. Students need to move; they need to have content and
instruction relevant to their lives; they need to choose how they want to learn. One example
among many comes from an experience I had in Grade 6 Language arts. When I arrived, they
were in the middle of learning more advanced forms of sentence structure and about to graduate
onto basic paragraph writing, eventually into essay writing. In my short time of teaching
traditionally, my mentor teacher and I found a worksheet on re-organizing sentences and
introducing transition words. Sure, this worked for some; but as I expected, many were
disengaged and did not succeed with it. When I got to design my own lesson plan for this, I spent
many hours contemplating how I could make something as dry as sentence fluency an interesting
and engaging topic for a group of 11 year olds.
Remembering what I had learned from my first semester at school, I designed a lesson
that kept students moving, and incorporated something that was relevant to them, at least within
the bounds that the topic of sentence fluency allows for. Since I took some time to get to know
them in my initial weeks of my practicum, I created sentences about topics they were interested
in: hockey, hunting, puppies, pop musicians, social media celebrities, etc. With that, I took
printed versions of these sentences and broke them down into fragments by cutting them out with
scissors. I had enough sentences for 5 groups of 4-5 students, and each group was tasked with
finding ways to organize these fragments into full sentences, making sentence fluency a hands-
on task. Some sentences fragments could be used in more than one way, though most students
reconstructed the original ones I wrote. In my first attempt at this style of lesson, I noticed
almost a complete shift in student engagement. Nearly all students participated in the activity,
and as a group, they managed to grasp the concepts of organizing sentences in different ways.
The EA in my classroom approached me at the end of class to offer her appreciation of the
lesson, too, stating that it was the first time all five of her students actively participated in a full
hours lesson in quite some time. I also found that they appreciated humorous sentences about
things they liked, and welcomed this content as a result.
On top of finding immediate success in this lesson, this was only a springboard for
further success in teaching such a dry topic. I also had a student, who was particularly shy, ask
me if we could do more things like this. Just before the class left, I addressed them with the
question of if they wanted to continue on with this style of lesson. I received a collective Yes!
as a response. So, I went home that night and designed two more lessons that dealt with similar
content, only expanding on a few things in terms of complexity. I observed them enjoy and
successfully complete the same style lesson, but more particularly, I noticed the student who
asked me to continue with this style of lesson take on a leadership role in her group. Suddenly
the most quaint, quiet little voice in the class was one of leadership and guidance for others. The
week before, during the first parent teacher meeting, her mother mentioned to my cooperating
teacher and I that this student is naturally shy, and that she was nervous about moving into grade
six. Seeing her progress as such was one of my proudest teacher moments during my time there.
To conclude, if I had learned anything, it is that being dynamic requires consistent
experimentation and willingness to take risks. I found this style of lesson to work, so I built upon
it. I must also say I had other not so successful ones with other classes. The lesson I cited was
made possible by two factors: I took the time to get to know my students and their interesting
during my first weeks at the school, and I was not afraid to break from traditional feet-under-
desk, pencils-on-paper, work-by-oneself form of practicing sentence writing.

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