Now that you have examined the four competencies related to Exploring and Enhancing Pedagogy, how will these inform your practice?
Active and Focused Observation: Informing Your Teaching Practice
During your program you will have many opportunities to think creatively and critically. You will be observing teachers and students engaging in teaching and learning. Digital portfolios are an important way to support and document reflective practice—both for yourself and your students.
During your observation and collaboration time, consider:
- How do you know that students are engaging creatively and critically? What does this look like in different classrooms? At different grades? In different subjects?
- What opportunities for thinking and engagement occur outside of classroom time?
- How do teachers help students understand the concepts of the various subject areas?
- How do teachers plan for learning? What resources do they use? How do they collaborate?
- What specific observations can you make about how different students learn?
- What things “get in the way” of students’ thinking?
- How do teachers make their thinking “visible” to learners?
- How does the curriculum support creative and critical thinking?
- What questions do teachers ask or do learners ask themselves to elicit creative and critical thinking?
Reflection
- Discuss planning and the planning processes with colleagues and educators. How do they describe their planning processes? What is useful for them and how can that help inform your practice?
- What are the connections between the Personal and Professional Preparation competencies, the Collaboration and Community Engagement competencies and the Creative and Critical Thinking competencies?
- What artifacts/evidence of your demonstration of creative and critical thinking can you include in your digital portfolio?
- When, as a student, have you engaged in critical thinking? Creative thinking? How was this assessed? How will you assess these?