Professional Competency 4

Implement teaching and learning situations.

Implement and supervise teaching and learning situations appropriate to the students and the educational aims.

Third Field Experience: Georges P. Vanier Elementary School

Aug to Dec 2022

To start off my field experience, I took time with all my groups to establish the classroom rules and behaviours I expected them to follow throughout. This way, I uncovered any preconceptions they had about the English classroom and reactivated their prior knowledge that was needed to prepare them for learning situations.  

Furthermore, throughout my internship, I continually checked and assessed any prior knowledge they might have had about topics we covered in my lessons to better meet them where their needs were. An example of this is when I corrected written assignments in my grade five groups and quickly noticed that the students’ prior knowledge about capitalization and punctuation was not as solid as it should be according to their grade level and the Progression of Learning. This is why I created a lesson based on reinforcing these grammar rules to look after the students collectively. In addition, I created this lesson with stimulating tasks that triggered active student engagement from all students, as grammar can often be a less stimulating topic for elementary school level students. The lesson offered a kinetic approach to learning the grammar rules and created a dance routine to aid memorization.  

During my internship, I had to follow a number of pre-determined activities from the workbook the parents purchased. However, I did not limit myself to those, as I added more stimulating activities and resources to engage the students with the topics. I also adapted the teaching and learning situations to the needs of the students, by guiding them in the tasks, providing extra resources or segmenting the activities.  

Finally, I offered continual feedback to students, in and out of the classroom. In formal settings, I provided thorough feedback with direct improvement strategies when necessary. In informal settings, I maximized on positive reinforcement and offered words of encouragement. Overall, I offered feedback in both formal and informal settings to foster students’ abilities to synthesize their learning.

During this field experience, in addition to the regular education classrooms, I taught special education classrooms, also known as classe relation. The students in the groups have specific learning needs that have to be met through the implementation of learning and evaluation situations. For these reasons, I created worksheets for every class that were adapted to their specific needs. I took the time to download the necessary software to create these worksheets. Below, you will find a few examples of worksheets that were adapted for students with fine motor skills developmental disorders. 

First Field Experience: André Laurendeau High School

Nov & Dec 2019