The third year students practising teaching (SO1)

One week of teaching involving 25 lessons, about half the lessons were spent on working with the TTF.

This time I gave the 5 trainees a form they were to use while planning their period. My idea about giving them a form was to make sure that they would try to plan their period from the  thinking point of view and not from the subject aim point of view. They were given "less to teach" in the subject point of view but were guided to the path of thinking about the pupils' role in the class room. The aim was that they could add more challenge to the tasks, try to use a thinking model and refelct with the pupils on the ways of learning.

Each trainee was using group work as the method in learning and had an aim to try to develop the group working skills as well with the pupils.

The trainees were told about TTF in one group tuition, a week and a half before the first trainee would start her week.

The main aim with the tuition was to explain the difference with training compared to their previous periods in classes. The focus was now on the learner and the learning skills the teachers are developing. The aim would have to formulated well into a question or a problem which would form the red thred throughout the practising. Less subject matter will give the pupils more room for developing thinking skills better. There would be time for real reflection and possibly for building algoritms as well.

Trainee 1

The Seminaari vegetable garden, make a study about the vegetables with the pupils

Can we recognize vegetables by tasting them?

Making a visit to the garden to collect vegetables for a tasting test.

Trainee 2

Traffic rules for a cyclist, make a study with the pupils where you teach them to use diagrams.

Can we suggest improvements to cyclists by finding out how they follow a certain rule?

Collecting information by making a questionaire for two different classes.

Trainee 3

Trees around our school, make a study with the pupils to learn more about the trees

Can we recognize deciduous trees when we don't use the leaves for recognition?

A study of 5 trees by using books, internet and doing a trip outside.

Trainee 4

Mammals in Finnish forrest, make a study to find out about their life in the forrest.

What parameters we need to study to find out if the mammals we choose could live in Rauma forrests?

The study will help the pupils to answer the question while making a trip to the forrest.

Trainee 5

Swamp as type of forrest, make a swamp study and a piece poetry about a swamp

The pupils will study about the swamp to be able to make a board game of a swamp.

They use the swamp information also to write a piece of poetry.

Trainee 1

Spesific theme and aims for the class

The vegetable garden – collecting the crops (science, Finnish, art)

What is the question/problem we are dealing with?

Tasting vegetables – Can we recognize vegetables by tasting them?

Thinking aims = the strategy for how we are learning something, one needs to learn to think to learn well.

We have got a theme and a problem. Solving it is up to the pupils’ ideas. We don’t know how but will work towards the solution.

1. How are we going to approach our task? Where do we start?

Pre task

A discussion about doing group work. The teacher collects by asking the pupils + and – comments about group work in general.

The teacher forms four groups. The groups get a task to find a name for the group. It has to have something to do with the vegetables or the garden.

A visit to the garden to collect different vegetables. (Marketta, a gardener)

Washing the vegetables and tasting them to find words to describe the taste. The teacher collects the words on the board.

In what way could we test how we can recognize the vegetables by tasting them.

* How does the vegetable taste like?

* How can you describe the taste?

 * finding words (taste, texture, smell, feeling)

* Can we categorize the describing words

 texture, feeling, taste, image etc.

 We are collecting new information

We are saving the information for further use

The findings by the pupils:

- touching helps, somebody else gives the sample

- smelling helps, hold your nose

- sounds help

- feel in the mouth

- texture (tomato, parsley)

- sour/sweet/bitter

- likeness/opinion

- hot/mild, don’t give a lot

- heavy taste (carrot)

2. How are we going to organize our information?

* How can we study our problem?

* What kind of a study should we do? How should we work in practice? What is the task? What do we need to take into account?

* The groups plan the study. What do we need? How can we find information to make a study?

* Writing a little report about the study.

* How are we going to publish our reports?

New ways of teaching for the  trainee

- Involved the pupils all the time in work, couldn't plan everything beforehand

- Gave the pupils time to think, excepted  silence in the class room, didn't try to brake it right away with another question

- Learned to plan school work on the basis of the curriculum and didn't need books or teachers' guides

- Learned about the importance of the limitations while giving tasks

- Reflected a lot with the pupils in different stages of the work

- Found the parameters of a tasting task with the pupils

- Needs still to develop the why are we studying like this- issue

- Difficult to talk about the thinking model when using it with the pupils