There will not be much blogging on this
trip! I knew that this course was would dominate my days but when you add the
commute, it's just nuts. I am in school from 8:30 until 5:30 (or even 6
pm!).
This
is my schedule:
8:30 - 9:00 print out any
assignments, lesson plans, photocopy requests and have them in by 9.
9:00 - 12:45 our classes and
observations of other teachers
12:45 - 1:45 lunch and a chance to
work on our homework
1:45 - 2:30 lesson planning
for next day, time with our tutors, tweaking last minute details for today
2:45 - 4:45 we teach English
classes, right now we are doing 30 min blocks, later this week it becomes 45
min, an the last week and a half it will be 60 min each. We have 5 student
teachers in my group and we rotate turns, 2 hours per day
4:45 - 5:15 (or even till 6)
feedback from out tutor on our teaching and suggestions on how to address any
problem areas.
Since I am staying with Padma & Ramesh
in Whitby, I have to add a commute. It's about an hour and a half in the
morning and about 2 hours at night. I take the subway and the GO Train. So I
leave the house by 6:50 each day and get back between 7:30 and 8. Each night I
have about an hour of homework and this weekend I have done about 7 hours. I'm
going to do a bit more so I can get a head start on next week because the
lesson planning gets longer each week as they add more elements that we are
expected to include. Last week the focus was on classroom management: giving
clear instructions; reducing teacher talk; increasing student participation
time; and using gestures, the interactive whiteboard and other materials in our
lessons.
This coming week we are focusing on the
lesson content as well as classroom management. We have to use different
approaches depending on the type of lesson (receptive, lexis, grammar,
pronunciation, etc.) and we have to complete a lexis analysis on each new
vocabulary item we are teaching or a syntax analysis on each grammatical
structure we will teach.
