My First Teaching Practicum

I had the opportunity to complete my first teaching practicum in my primary teachable; Physical Education.  I was in charge of teaching a grade 11 open physical education course of all male students. With this being my first time teaching a course there were number of things that I didn't expect and even more lessons for me to learn.

Going into my practicum I thought that the time it took to lesson plan a lesson each and every day would be the most difficult part. I quickly realized how mistaken that was-yes the lesson planning was time consuming but soon I became accustom to it. In fact, the biggest struggle I found was developing and establishing an effective routine with the class. The student's themselves had a difficult time with maintaining a regular attendance of the class. This made it a struggle to implement any routine at all. I decide to re-think my ideal routines and begin to work through a routine that was tailored to the class.

My routine was based around always having a structured plan for the class but leaving opportunity to take the students feedback into the daily activities. We would start the day with 5 minutes of personal ball time; where the students could use any equipment from the days lesson to warm up and "play" with their peers. The students always responded well to this. From here I would make a judgment call to see if they appeared to all be sufficiently warmed up or if we should do a group warm up. After this we would have a class "huddle" where we looked at the daily learning goals and agenda. The students would then know what to expect for the remainder of the class. Going through the activities of the day the students would be allowed to suggest any modifications to the rules during the instruction periods. This allowed them to have a voice in the activities we engaged in. At the end of the lesson we would debrief and always discuss strategies and tactics used throughout the day; what they found successful what they had difficulties with. We would end this debrief with a review of whether or not they felt they achieved the learning goals from the day. I would use this debrief information to help guide my planning for the next lesson.

Having this routine in place created a structure to the class that I believe the students really appreciated. I could easily see them become more engaged in the lessons and in turn were reaching the learning goals more regularly.

It is for these reasons that I honestly believe one of the most important lessons I learnt during my practicum was how significant a well developed, personalized routine is for the success of a class.