Claire Stafford 18869561

Practicum Report 2

My teaching practicum was a very informative and educational experience for me, where I learnt to manage

Year 7 French classes. My school had children from diverse backgrounds, with the majority of students of low

ability in literacy and numeracy, and many students with behavioral issues. The class I had to focus on most

was a mixed-ability class, with some students who were capable and some students who had learning

disabilities. I therefore had to focus on catering for the many different needs of the students. During this time,

I implemented the use of many resources such as PowerPoints, videos, worksheets and group tasks to enable

students the best opportunities to improve on their abilities in speaking, listening, reading and writing French.

I taught four of the five French classes and as a collective taught around 90 students all who had different

learning and behavioral needs.

The first key learning moment was in one of my first teaching classes. I had the low-ability class and I had to

adapt my teaching method. On my previous practicum the majority of my classes were of high ability learners

and I hadn’t dealt with this mix of bad behaviour and low ability. It was significant as I had to change my entire

thinking and teaching process to be able to accommodate their learning needs.

The second key learning moment was appreciating the importance of my own volume control. In one class I

noticed that I was able to get the attention of the students more effectively with silence than with trying to

match or beat their noise level with my own voice. Instead I just stood at the front of the classroom and

quietly talked to one student. This made the students quieten down much more effectively than if I had yelled

over their voices to silence them.

The third and final moment that showed me critical learning insights was observing my teacher and seeing the

different ways she taught Year 7. Because of the majority being lower ability, I was able to see how she

modified her lesson and materials to be able to cater to the variety of needs of her students. This was a

significant moment as it demonstrated that the learning materials can be the same or similar for students --

what needs to vary is the delivery method to the students.

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These three key learning moments have greatly changed the way I think and practice teaching. They have

demonstrated that teaching allows for continual involvement no matter how long you have been teaching. The

needs of students are continually changing so we as teachers need to grow and develop our pedagogies to

ensure that the students are getting the best education and help. Furthermore, the key learning moments

have shown me that there are many ways to manage behavior. Every student behaved in a different manner

depending on their previous lessons, the food they ate, to their home lives and as teachers we can never

predict how students are going to come into the classroom, which is highly evident at my practical school. As a

result, I had to be very accommodating and vary my lessons to ensure that the students’ behavior was

addressed and managed in the appropriate way. Adjusting my voice was one of the most effective ways to

manage students’ behavior. In addition, I found that by focusing more on the positives rather than the

negatives, students were a lot more receptive and engaged in my lessons due to positive reinforcement rather

than negative reinforcement. By focusing on the positives and allowing my voice to dictate the lesson rather

than the students’ behavior, the students were able to learn a lot more effectively. Lastly by ensuring that I

knew the needs of my students and how they learn I was able to modify lessons to meet the students’ needs

and abilities.

The three key lessons have greatly changed the way that I think about teaching. They have ensured that my

pedagogical practices have continued to evolve. By watching how other teachers instruct their classes, I have

been able to modify my practices to ensure that the needs of the students are being met. By observing other

classes I have been shown many different ways to discipline, teach and interact with students. By learning how

to use my voice to control a class room, and that I had many other methods other than yelling above the noise,

has not only saved my voice on many occasions but demonstrated the importance of a plethora of behavioral

modification methods. My pedagogical practices previous to this practicum were very minimal, but by

observing the teacher and having a chance to teach by myself I have evolved as an educator and my students

have greatly benefited from that.

There were practices that did and did not work in my practicum. Of the practices that I found most effective

was the inclusion of activities surrounding project-based learning to allow students to learn through real

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situations. Project based learning is a focal point of my pedagogical practices in French as it allows students to

integrate learning and real-life situations onto their education, which is paramount to their understanding of

concepts and grammar. The integration of real life scenarios into my practices enabled students to have a

better grasp of what I was trying to teach them They were able to identify with the topics on a deeper level

and as Jong, Konings, Czabanowska, (2014) state, problem-based leaning is an excellent approach because it

stimulates constructive, collaborative and self-directing learning from authentic problems that are relevant to

the students and the students’ everyday life. From experience in the classroom, students were more receptive

and open to new concepts rather than when I just gave them a task and didn’t relate it to the students

themselves. Real life situational learning also makes the students more motivated to learn and can enhance

student engagement in learning (Gobby & Walker, 2017).

One of the major strategies that did not work in my classroom was inquiry-based learning. In the year 7

classrooms that I taught, letting students try and work together to learn and improve did not work. The

students need to have more guidance and structure. I still ensured that I wasn’t constantly talking to the

students, but rather I would give the students the knowledge they needed to learn new concepts and content

and then allowed them to work together and with real-life situational examples to then enhance their own

learning. Haq (2017) states that inquiry-based learning enables students to have more influence and control

over what they learn. This did not work in my classroom as when I attempted this pedagogy method, the

students were constantly distracted and did not do any work. The students, especially those with lower ability

did not benefit from the freedom of inquiry-based learning and rather needed a much more structured lesson

with constant aid from the teacher.

Overall, the students benefitted most from structured lessons where they were given concepts and real-life

situations to match the lesson. By integrating positive behavioral affirmations and monitors the level of my

voice I was able to best teach the students.

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Reference List

Gobby, B. & Walker, R. (2017). Powers of Curriculum: Sociological Perspectives on Education, Australia: Oxford

University Press.

Haq, I. (2017). Inquiry-based Learning. In P. Cantillon, ABC of Learning and Teaching in Medicine (3rd ed., pp.

11-14). Hobroken: John Wiley & Sons.

Jong, N., Konings, K. and Czabanowska, K. (2014). The Development of Innovative Online Problem-Based

Learning: A Leadership Course for Leaders in European Public Health. Journal of University Teaching and

Learning Practices, 11(3).