Relfection after 5 days in my practicum:
It is Saturday morning and my feeling on Thursday afternoon has become reality, I have got a cold or flu. This week has been interesting but I really do need to think about the implications of my observations now and set a plan for the following week.

Observations:

# A week has gone by and I haven't much except thoughts to show for it. That means that I better get good mileage out of these thoughts for the time being, and planned to be more productive in the following weeks.

# Despite her experience and my limited experience, I think that my supervising teacher's teaching has a lot to be desired. Examples of poor classroom management abound. Two examples I will cite:

In order to do one-on-one maths and reading testing, she has repeatedly given the class loose instructions to play with some things while she works. Within 5 minutes naturally the class is doing all the things they shouldn't be doing. She yells at the top of her voice "HOW DARE YOU! MY HEART IS SORE!". In lectures, we learn that if you give poor instructions it is your mistake if the kids get diverted. I think this makes sense. Having useful activities available and prepared would be the best way to go. During planning for day of lessons, it is obvious that if you are doing 1-on-1 work then you need something to engage the other students. Getting them to play is not productive for them, and gets the kids all excited.

Another case during the one-on-one testing, was when she asked the child being tested "What number comes after 7?", quickly a student who "should" be playing with something else, comes running up and says "8!" before the child being tested can speak. Again, "HOW DARE YOU! GO AND SIT BY THE RUBBISH BIN!" So the child goes and sits by the rubbish bin and the teacher, who hasn't specified when the child will come back, forgets about him during the testing. After a while, I walked over to him and asked him whether he knew why he was being punished. He didn't. I explained it to him and asked him if he was ready to behave, to which he nodded his head. I let him join his classmates again. If someone doesn't know the reason for which they were being punished, it doesn't stand to reason that they will learn anything at all from it and will probably either resent the teacher or have a reduced self-image.

# Being that I am not impressed with the habits that have been drilled into them, I do have to bear in mind that I will need to be doing some assessments with them. So, I need to have a sense of control, otherwise when I am observed by people at the University it will not be a pretty demonstration. I read a book to them "The Story of the Gingerbread Man" but at the same time experimented with a few instructional techniques and I have some reason to think in that small, low-risk environment, I held the classes attention and controlled the less controllable students. But that is only a start, and I will need to build up for more challenging instructional tasks.

# Compared to the last school that I went to for practicum, this school has put little thought into how they will accommodate student learners. At the last school, students teachers had a guided tour by the school, a powhiri welcome and a proactive mentor who arranged times to meet with us (a requirement for which they get paid for by the University). The mentor at Avondale didn't seem to know that he had to meet with me, even though presumeably he gets paid to do so. And when we did set a time, Friday afternoon, he found that he was busy with the staff socialising event and cancelled it.

# The talented students are really talented. The behind students are very behind. We have several ESOL children, one from Russia also has some developmental problems. I had to find out the other ESOL students by observation. Two of the young polynesians were recent immigrants. It challenges a preconception of mine that Polynesians at the school would all be born here and hence have good English.

# I am not sure how well I will be by Monday, and I may have a sicky that day just so I have recovered sufficiently.

That's all for now. There are a few other thoughts that lie beneath the surface of my memory, so maybe I will append this later.