Weeks 2 & 3

The past two weeks have been very busy here at Queen's. In most of my classes, we are now learning how to create lesson plans and rubrics, and what we can do to keep classroom management. In the discussion of classroom management I have heard several inputs. Coming from a small secondary school, in a small community, I have never seen a problem with classroom management, as all the teachers knew almost all the students. However, there are a few points from other students that I thought were very good. These points were: following through on what you say, layout the classroom so students cannot get distracted, try and engage the "talkative" or "troublesome" students (keep them busy so they cannot disrupt you), and have a backup plan if your lesson was too short or there is a technology malfunction. I thought these points were all strong and useful when preparing for my own classroom. In one of my classes, we had a group discussion on if students should have assigned seating or not. I feel that in a grade 9 or 10 students should have assigned seating, both in academic and applied class. This way student won't talk to their friends and hopefully won't disturb the class. However, by grade 11 and 12 students should be more aware of where they should seat, as grades are starting to get more important for universities and colleges. It was also brought up that if a seating arrangement is not working, then you can always move the students around. With all the talk about classroom management, I started to think what I would want to do for my own class. What I ended up deciding is that I would have class rules (that I would probably put on the course outline). Most of the rules wouldn't be strict, but all will be respectful; such as "Don't talk when I am teaching", "Respect your peers ideas", "Homework will be checked every day", etc.

During Week 2, (September 12), our physics curriculum course had a visit from Tim Pendergast. Tim is a teacher at Holy Cross Catholic School here is Kingston. During his visit, Tim talked about how teaching has change and how it is no longer a teacher standing in front of the class talking, it is now more hand on and is becoming student lead activities. On September 19, we were all able to see what he meant, as the class visited Holy Cross and were able to observe a grade 9 and two grade 10 classes work through student lead activities. The subject that the students were working through was chemistry (for the grade 10) and the ecosystem (for the grade 9). As I have not done either of these subjects in a long time, I didn't feel very useful in the classes or when students asked me questions. I really enjoyed seeing this in a classroom and could see how it would be useful; however, I still think that I would prefer to just 'lecture" to the students, and maybe do student lead activities once a unit. However, this perspective might change once I start teaching.