Reflections: Practicum Day 1

You know when you've been away from some familiar place for a long time and you think you've forgotten everything but when you get there the old map of the place keeps asserting itself? It's like that.

It's been a hectic weekend: spent a chunk of it in hospital, coming in sleep deprived etc etc.

Reception is warm ... the atmosphere is laid back, focussing on meeting people and re-establishing old contacts.

Proper reflection re module 2 to follow. It says;

• You are also required to provide evidence of effective practice and reflection in your e-portfolio. EVIDENCE MUST BE ACCOMPANIED WITH ANNOTATION IN RELATION TO TEACHER OR STUDENT LEARNING

New source: NZIP

Wait... wait... PANIC

Disaster - I got distracted with personal issues and missed the deadline for assignment 2!!!
I am 1 day 19 hours late getting it in because of this... I can only hope it's going to be OK. After all, had I submitted two days ago, incomplete, I'd just have got an extension past today.

I am having a hard time understanding the exemplars - don't know why. Everyone else seems to just get it.

Mean time - I am supposed to have started practicum last week ... all ready to go, with a school lined up, but a burocratic snafu is delaying things. Probably just as well considering crisis.

1st module compete (sort of)

I am in the Coffee Club on Commerce street using their wifi because Imperial Lane, which is comfier, has a jack-hammer running right outside their door. Just proofed and tweaked the assignment for module 1 ... at some stage I have to stop and submit the project to the client for feedback.

It's more a discussion of a unit than a formal unit plan like I'd normally do ... so it is almost all annotations - so I just stuck them in the body. This may make it hard to mark.

It's also a physics investigation into the forces involved in saving an egg from breaking in a 1 story fall. This may be a little short ... may have been expected to run a whole unit on "collisions" or something to last 5-10 weeks. But that seems excessive to me - just from a teaching perspective: that's about half the available course time or something. There are other subjects.

I'm probably panicking for nothing.

Worst case: I get it back for resubmission ... inquiry teaching right?

Dangers of analogies in teaching science

... and other issues.
Analogies
Misconceptions arising from teaching

Reflection on Assignment 1

Worries about a friend have been distracting me and now I'm concerned my unit is not the size of the others. It's a physics investigation... I wonder if science units tend to be small?
I'll have to get something basic finished so I can get feedback.

Physics of Cats

There has to be a lesson in this someplace! Meanwhile I need to keep the link handy.
How do cats land on their feet and other marvels.

Imperial Lane in the CBD has great coffee and free WiFi ... ANZAC weekend done and dusted, I can start plowing through the 1st assignment.

This is a unit plan - I could just write one from scratch but it may work out more efficient to annotate one someone else did. Hunting resources:

PamHook has a bunch of SOLO resources from all over. Looks like commercially sourced materials.

There is always stuff like: Info.com agregating overseas lesson plans to pour over.

I kinda like the idea of a practical unit like the egg drop lessons - the link goes to a 3-lesson plan for US students. May be a bit short - but can be extended to multiple trials to refine the designs. I was sketching out one of these in class as the assignment was being explained.