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Week 3 Psi Reflection

Danny reflects on their third week of practicum teaching a grade 3/4 classroom. They have improved in lesson planning and public speaking skills, but find emotional challenges in addressing students' personal issues. Moving forward, Danny wants to focus on time management, clear lesson structure, differentiated instruction, and organizing content appropriately.

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55 views

Week 3 Psi Reflection

Danny reflects on their third week of practicum teaching a grade 3/4 classroom. They have improved in lesson planning and public speaking skills, but find emotional challenges in addressing students' personal issues. Moving forward, Danny wants to focus on time management, clear lesson structure, differentiated instruction, and organizing content appropriately.

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api-530115287
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Week 3 PSI Practicum Reflection Danny Cuadra

My third week of practicum has passed by quicker than I thought possible, I honestly

can’t believe how quickly the time is passing me by and how in just a few more weeks my time

in my classroom will be over. These kids are absolutely amazing and everyday I get to spend

with them is an opportunity that I take with both hands, not only for my own journey of teaching,

but also for the opportunity to help shape these kids lives. Soon I’ll be back in the classroom

myself as a student, and I wont get to continue this journey for another year, so I’m making the

best of the time I have left in my practicum to connect to and learn alongside these kids. Even

just 3 weeks into my PSI practicum I can’t wait to get my own classroom, even with the

knowledge of how much I have still to learn and how far away that goal is.

This past week has been going quite well as I’ve improved in a variety of areas, I had set

out to improve upon, and shown me some areas of improvement as well. However, I can also

recognize that part of this week has also been difficult and shown me some of the less known

parts of the job. To start off, my lesson planning has been going well, as I find the in between to

over planning and under planning for someone at my stage in learning and the different subjects

as well. This is definitely one of my goals that has a most distinct and markable improvement as

I can see in writing how my lesson planning has changed. Subjects like gym are difficult to plan

in terms of predictability, and planning out what exactly is going to happen, but can’t simply be

left too simple either. The key point I’ve discovered is in where the details for the planning are,

in a class such as science it is very important to have a distinct and detailed outline of what the

students need to learn, how you are going to teach them and the specific questions and activities

they’ll do to show you that learning. In gym class, while all of those things are still important, it

is much easier to structure the lesson plan around differentiation and proactive planning, what
could the kids have troubles with, what are some things that I should keep an eye on, how can I

structure my lesson to ensure that the kids understand the steps. Things like planning

differentiation for different students and knowing what is needed to get done before the lesson

are key pieces of a Gym plan.

In terms of my connection and relationship with the students, I believe I can confidently

say that I have reached a fairly good point with most students in the class, so much so that they

trust me to bring forward issues with their peers. This week I’ve begun to see the way that small

disputes are settled in the class, and seen bigger issues begin to sprout up in the classroom. The

relationship that their home life, social life, and self confidence has with their school work and

emotional state during lesson has been made even clearer to me this past week. I feel honoured

and privileged to have a chance to help these kids both with inner issues and those spurred on by

other kids or adults, but it is also a terrifying responsibility. I want to be for these kids what I

didn’t have, but I know just how fragile trust can be and how the way one deals with these

situations can be extremely important. Another aspect that I hadn’t expected when my practicum

was at such a young age group is how difficult some of these situations could be to emotionally

process and handle for myself. Remembering to take care of myself so that I can continue to help

the kids is just as important, and the situations can be a lot more difficult than I had prepared

myself to deal with.

The last of the goals that I had set myself as I began my PSI is one that I have been able

to work on consistently, even more so because of COVID, as wearing a mask means I have to

enunciate and speak loudly constantly. Working on my read out loud skills and my overall skills

at tone and enunciation when teaching has become a surprisingly merged experience, and if

anything good comes out of wearing masks constantly it’ll be my pronunciation and enunciation
of words becoming a lot better. Even while speaking my first language enunciation was

something that I have struggled with as I grew older and reading out loud often only exasperated

the problem. Getting the chance to speak to kids, read to them and read with them on a daily

basis these past couple of weeks have really helped me pay more attention to not only how I’m

saying the words, but also the words that I am using in general. As an adult and university

student I have become accustomed to using bigger words that the Grade ¾ class I teach are

familiar with. This is difficult for me as have often had a hard time coming up with definitions

for words that I intuitively know what they mean. Being aware of my overall speaking practices,

using them more often, and reading out loud much more often has helped me improve all of

these facets of my speech.

Moving forward as it is past the halfway point and I received my midway formative

assessment some of the key things I want to keep working on and improving upon include

- Time Management

o This is one I really struggled with this week and accidentally almost had the kids

running late for agenda’s, not a mistake I want to make again, so I’ve

implemented several silent alarms on my watch to remind me of the time.

- Lesson Introductions including the overall expectations for each lesson

- Differentiating my instruction and assessment for the different learning needs of the

students

- Organizing the amount of content I include in my lessons (time management)

- Having more cohesive and clear lesson wrap ups and conclusions

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