Individual CAS Project

Creativity + Service

Learning OUtcomes:

1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth.

2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.

3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience.

4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences.

5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.

The Five CAS Stages:

Investigation

For this particular CAS project some of my interests are to learn how to be an assistant and to learn a new skill that may be helpful in my future. For this CAS project I will be being a teacher assistant for the grade 5 class. This means that the students are in primary and they are still kids. By being a teacher assistant I want to learn how to help and deal kids which might be helpful in my future career. By being a TA it will also show that I can handle responsibilities given by a higher level, in this case the teacher. Other than only gaining new skills and talents I want to help the students with my own knowledge. I want to give them the knowledge I have learnt from being a student which would be helpful for the students I am a teacher assistant.

Preparation

The role I will be playing for this CAS project would be being a teacher assistant. Some of my responsibilities may be handling the students while the teacher is busy preparing for the class. Or if the teacher is attending a student to help him/her, I want to help the other in that mean time when they need the teacher's help. I will be being a teacher assistant for about three months, from January to March (2018). If I want to I might extend the time to few more months. Some of the skills acquire that is needed to engage in this CAS project would to be, patient, calm, understanding, and to be helpful. Working with students that are young could be had if you are not patient or calm. So being patient and calm would really help me in understanding individual students and their characteristics. This will help me in the future on understanding what and how to handle a particular student.

Action

To carry out this CAS project I will be a teacher assistant for a particular class, which will be grade 5 section B. In my opinion if I will help a particular class then I will be able to understand and bond with them more because I will only be teaching those particular set of students. I most probably won't be the only teacher assistant for that class, this way I will need to coordinate with the other teacher student to set out duties for each other. To solve the problem of which TA will do what, I am planning to split the students between the teacher students. This will make us help and teach those students in specific.

Reflection

To start off on my experience on being a teacher assistant, I would say I learnt a lot throughout the time of being a teacher assistant. In the beginning of being a teacher assistant it was a bit hard handling the students. The class grade 5B, there were all sorts of student, such as students that procrastinated, did their classwork on time, or students who just wanted free time and play. But as a teacher assistant I had to make sure that the students finished all the work given by the teacher. I was a teacher assistant for almost the whole second semester except for when I had midterm and final exams. Working with these for almost more than 3 months I could really see growth and accomplishments in myself and the students I had been the teacher assistant for. I went through the first five learning outcomes, which are listed above. Overall, I learnt how to responsible of the students, being a patient and understanding person. Also making myself and the students and teacher comfortable with each other, to trust each other.

Demonstration

Being a teacher assistant was hard, it tested my patience, but I overcame it by going through a lot of different experiences. For example, there was as a particular student, that I was responsible of. I had to help her finish her journal for what she has done in the past week. She had to write down things like their goals, what they had learnt, what was a bad and good thing about the week. In the beginning the student didn't really write and procrastinated and wanted to play. But as I helped her throughout these months she got better and started to finish her journal on time before doing anything else. There are many things that I have accomplished through being a teacher assistant, some of them are having responsibilities, being a patient and understanding person, and having trust in others. I also learnt on how to handle kids, which will be helpful in the future. I will be sharing this CAS experience through my portfolio and by helping the future teacher assistants. I can tell them what they should or shouldn't expect or do while being a teacher assistant and help them understand the role of being a teacher assistant.