First Day

Tomorrow will be the first day of my middle school practicum. Over the course of these next few months, I will spend 40+ hours at a local middle school working with students and growing in competence with lesson planning, teaching, and self assessing my development as an educator. I have experienced a tremendous amount of growth over these past few months. Lesson planning is becoming easier. However, I am finding that I tend to "stack" my lessons so full that I am not able to get to all the content. In self assessing this tendency, I realize that I need to focus on paring down my activities in such a way that I only do those activities that specifically serve to meet the desired learning targets that effectively meet the student's learning needs. I feel that trouble shooting this part of the teaching/planning development will present the most challenge for me personally as I enter my practicum for this quarter. To do this means that I will need to be actively listening and formatively assessing students in order to properly differentiate instruction. This will also take some time to work out. I am looking forward to jumping in and making the most of this opportunity.