Carly Spoulos

Reflection PS1 Week 4

December 6-10, 2021
Grade 1

REFLECTION PS1 WEEK 4

I am grateful for the past week as it has reassured my desire to want to be in the
classroom. I realized I was coming to the end of my practicum and felt mixed emotions of
proudness and sadness as I didn’t want to stop teaching or being with my students. I am so
excited to one day have my own classroom where I get to attend every day.

My goal for practicum semester one was to learn how to effectively use formative
assessment within my lessons and teaching methods. This past week, I experienced multiple
learning moments that have contributed to working towards my professional learning goal.
While observing math lessons within my class, I made note that my students knew what a
number line was. However, I did not know that my students could not use a number line; they
could only identify what a number line was. After my math lesson, I quickly made note that I
need to be more aware of the previous knowledge that my students know. This learning
moment led me to ensure my next lesson for math was based on subtracting with number
lines. When I thoroughly explained how to use a number line in my next math lesson, my
students were successful and benefited from learning this new technic for subtraction. This
relates to Foster Effective Relationships within the TQS, specifically, “providing culturally
appropriate and meaningful opportunities for students and for parents/guardians, as partners
in education, to support student learning”.

In one of my math lessons, I had printed out the exact same worksheet for all my
students to complete. I quickly realized that this would not be effective as my stronger students
were in their proximal zone of development; however, my weaker math students were
confused and overwhelmed. I quickly made note of this learning experience and for the next
lesson I had a different plan for my class. I started off my next lesson with the same worksheet
for all my students to practice their subtraction with a number line from 0-10. When the
stronger math students were finished, I gave them a more challenging worksheet where they
had to complete subtraction questions from 0-20. When my weaker students were done the
first sheet, they got a similar worksheet as repetition is what they require to build the
foundation for subtracting with number lines. There were two students who struggle with new
concepts, so I made sure to pull them to the middle table to work on the questions together.
After working on the first worksheet together, I knew they were ready to try the second one on
their own. In the end, they completed the second sheet on their own and you could see the
excitement and proudness in their face. This relates to Demonstrating a Professional Body of
Knowledge within the TQS, specifically, “applying student assessment and evaluation practices
that: support the use of reasoned judgment about the evidence used to determine and report
the level of student learning”.