Planning For Learning

Goal for Winter Semester 2026: For my practicum in Winter 2026, my goal is to create long range plans. In my Fall 2024 practicum, I had the opportunity to create both short and medium range (mid-range) plans. I am very interested in what a long term/semester long plan would look like and how it may benefit my overall teaching. My next practicum is longer (a semester long) and I have already began researching and asking my current mentor teacher how to create long term plans. I feel that this will greatly benefit me and that I can definitely take on this goal. 

Relevancy: Being able to efficiently create long range plans is a skill that benefits not only an educator, but their students as well. Creating long range plans will help to visualize what must be accomplished in a bigger picture, thus helping to create better mid range and short range plans.

How I will accomplish this: As my final practicum is longer and I am taking on more responsibility, I feel that this goal will be achievable. I have already had practice with creating mid-range and short range plans. I have also had my mentor teacher during my Fall 2024 practicum show me her long range plans and she had explained the process of creating them. I will collaborate with my future mentor teacher to accomplish this goal and ensure that I am doing my long range plans correctly.

Growth: This goal went amazing! The reason that I believe this goal had went so well was due to my efficient lesson planning. As I was in my practicum for four months, I was given permission to use mid-range and long-range plans from the beginning. I received very positive feedback from both my faculty and supervisor and mentor teacher in regards to this goal. Both had discussed my intentionality with planning and always knowing where I was going next based on student understanding and the time I had.

Artifact: Link to multiplication and division, grade four, long range/unit plan

My goal for winter semester 2024:  I want to become more efficient in creating smaller and more time efficient lesson plans. I have yet to create a short lesson as our previous lesson plans were meant to be longer. I want to be able to create a short lesson (~30 minutes) while ensuring it is beneficial for the students and hitting essential learning outcomes.

How I will accomplish this: I will try and do this with one of my three connected lessons this semester. I will discuss ideas with my mentor teacher and gather her opinion on each idea. I will then create the lesson and rehearse it as if I was the age of my students to ensure it is an appropriate length of time.

Reflection of Achievement/Progress: This goal went quite well but still needs to be worked on. The majority of the lessons that I had taught were more than 30 minutes. This was partially due to the fact that I had incorporated many learning outcomes into each lesson. There was one lesson that was used for diagnostic assessment purposes that was approximately 15 minutes. This lesson was a book read to the class by me and them having to point out verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Within 15 minutes, I read the book, explained all expectations and the purpose of the lesson. I was able to accurately assess the students as well as deliver the lesson within this 15 minute time frame. As this was the only shorter lesson I had completed I would like to carry this goal into my year three fall semester.

Artifacts: Below is a link to three assessment lessons I had taught. Within these lessons there is one labelled "Lesson #2: Nouns, verbs, and adjectives identification in stories - Diagnostic assessment". This was the only lesson that I had taught that was shorter and also effectively assessed the students understanding/knowledge of the targeted concepts based on the Alberta curriculum learning outcomes.

Assessment Lesson Plans 

Future Goal:  As my goal did not go as planned in the previous semester I will be continuing to work on the same goal. This decision has been made as many lessons need to be shorter while still giving effective instruction and giving the students enough time to complete an assessment. I want to become more efficient in creating smaller and more time efficient lesson plans. I want to be able to create a short lesson (~30 minutes) while ensuring it is beneficial for the students and hitting essential learning outcomes.

Growth/Progress: My goal for this semester was to learn about the Alberta curriculum, specifically for grade one.  This goal is still a work in progress.  After a discussion with my mentor teacher, we decided that this should be a future goal as for my first year I should focus more on being comfortable within the classroom and seeing the way in which it functions.  Although, I did gain a basic understanding of the curriculum through asking questions about each lesson that was taught and what learning objectives were being utilized. This helped with my lesson plan as well. I was able to know what the students still had to learn in regards to their curriculum. This is an area of growth for myself that I plan to expand on and achieve.