“Educators implement effective planning, instruction, assessment and reporting practices to create respectful, inclusive environments for student learning and development.”
In my most recent practicum, I feel that Standard 5 was the one I struggled with the most. The baseline level of Standard 5 holds educators responsible for effective planning of instruction, assessment, and reporting practices. I felt like – especially in the first 2 weeks – I was barely keeping my head above water on this. I was trying to pump out my lessons and assessments for each day but found myself barely keeping up. I even pulled a couple all-nighters, and while those helped me to both catch up and get ahead in my planning, they inhibited my ability to perform as an educator the next day.
Lesson planning with official templates took me so long that I couldn’t do them for each day. Over the course of the 4 weeks I took the advice of my coaching teacher and developed week and day plans that helped me to organise my thoughts and schedule. By the end of practicum I finally felt secure in my planning and organisation. There was some time during practicum in which I thought about quitting, and I struggled with my own belief in myself. I didn’t want to fail my students, and I wanted to prove to myself that I was capable. I started focusing more on what the purpose of my lessons were, and what my assessments were doing. I realised that one of my major problems was trying to recreate lessons that I had done in high school, and was more focused on that rather than the learning intentions.
My last week of practicum, I had a well-developed week plan and was even attempting new teaching methods compared to my previous lessons. It was difficult to leave my comfort zone, but being more well prepared and organised allowed me to try out new things. This is why I said that the effective planning was the BASELINE. Before you can begin to do all the things you want to to differentiate learning and create fun and new assessments, you have to have the organisation down.
My experience with Standard 5 reminds me a lot of the idea of open rubrics and less strict grading. If I had received a grade on Standard 5 from the entirety of my practicum, I probably would barely deserve a pass. However, by the end of the practicum I think I was satisfactory. Not exceeding, but the growth I saw in myself instilled more confidence in me than I’d had in a long time. Here is the week plan I made for the final week.