Introduction
Critical reflection is a fundamental device that teachers should use to evaluate their teaching strategies and methods. The main purpose of reflection is to improve teaching and learning processes and strategies (Serra, 2015). During the periods of my teaching practices, I used to reflect critically on my strengths and weaknesses points immediately after each lesson by answering what, why and how questions. Additionally I used to discuss and share ideas with my MST, which helped me to focus on the needed areas while preparing for my future lessons. However, in this page, I provided my reflections about my improvement of the six teaching competencies through my teaching practices durations.
Commitment to professionalism reflection
I have always dreamed to be a teacher. Studying at college that requires lots of effort and work. I can honestly say I was afraid of just thinking about how I was going to be able to manage my time and achieve high grades, but I have. At the beginning of my teaching practice journey, I faced many challenges. I used to be late for my classes and leave duties for the last and complete them at the last moment, which prevented me from being professional and participate in other things to entertain myself and obtain experience. However, I have completely changed and I believe this was related to the teaching experience that I went through and being surrounding by supportive people. I became aware of the importance of time management. Thus, I used to create timetable of my duties, which allowed me carrying them effectively. Additionally, I noticed the significant role of using timer during lessons on achieving the learning objectives successfully. Moreover, I understood that being a part of school is essential through building good relationships with others and participating in school activities, events and achievements. Also, I used to help my MSTs with their duties such as correcting students work, monitoring them while working and attending morning assembly.
Attending morning assembly to help my MST with monitoring students
Participating in Expo 2020 event through preparing morning broadcast with students
Evidence
Planning for learning reflection
At the heart of every effective curriculum, is a progressive plan for students' learning and development. I believe that planning for learning is one of the most important keys of making learning effective, progressive and exciting because of several reasons that I understood through my teaching practice journey. First, planning for learning ensures that all learners enjoy a balanced curriculum. Additionally, when it comes to technology use, planning comes at the top of learning because it is essential to provide the needed materials that can build students skills on their home experiences and promote a learning progression in their technological literacy. Furthermore, I became aware of planning for learning crucial role on achieving the learning objectives. I used to Plan for my lessons using the template that my MCT used to provide for us, which helped me to prepare the suitable assessments by considering my learning objectives of each lesson. Thus, I was able to achieve my objectives by the end of the lessons successfully.
A lesson plan sample including the needed materials and activities.
The PowerPoint that I prepared to deliver what I planned for including the activities.
Evidence
Managing learning reflection
Managing learning is another important factor of learning process success. Through my teaching practice I learned many classroom management strategies because better classroom management helps teachers to train responsible students. Thus, educators who are able to manage their classes tend to be authoritative. This means they provide freedom for students within the boundaries of the established rules and routines in the classroom. I used to establish rules and routines with my students. I was presenting my classroom at the beginning of each class and this helped me to manage students' behavior effectively. Additionally, I used to implement some reinforcement strategies to motivate students to learn and boost their positive behavior. Doing these things allowed me to provide a balance between freedom and control of student behavior in the class, which is the best recipe for training responsible students.
The implementation of black board reinforcement strategy to manage students' behavior. Students needed to follow classroom rules so they do not receive red points.
The small gifts that I gave to the group who received less red points as a reward to boost students' good behavior.
Evidence
Implementing learning reflection
Nowadays, educators face new generations of students who have a very close relationship with technology and social media. Thankfully, we had the opportunity to practice teaching both online and face-to-face in classroom. We learned how to combine classes with the new interactive materials that mobile devices allow, and the many options they offer. Additionally, I learned many useful and effective strategies that can help me to implement good learning with students. I used to prepare the appropriate materials that can be combined with technology such websites and Microsoft applications. Moreover, I was using visual aids like videos and pictures to enhance students' comprehension process. Furthermore, I was giving the students ideas about the are going to learn in each lesson by discussing the learning objectives with them. These strategies allowed me to support students learning and provide them with the needed materials to meet their needs.
Evidence
A sample of using visual aids (pictures) during one of my online lessons.
A sample while presenting my learning objectives during one of my online lessons.
Assessment reflection
Assessment is a powerful tool that can be used to assess and evaluate students' comprehension of the new concepts. I believe it one of the basic factors that teachers must be aware of its important. However, assessments are divided into two parts. Firstly, the formative assessments, which are used to monitor students' learning process. Secondly, the summative assessments that used to evaluate students leaning at the end of lesson or unit. During my teaching practices, we had the opportunity to create various assessments such as learning games, worksheets or even oral questions based on students' learning styles and levels. Additionally, we learned that our assessments must be linked to our learning objectives to ensure achieving them. However, providing students with suitable assessments allowed me to assess students' prior knowledge, comprehensions of new concepts and ideas. Moreover, they allowed me to determine the areas that I need to focus on to improve students performance.
Evidence
Samples of a lesson plans including the assessments that were linked to my learning objectives and my reflection about how they helped me to achieve those objectives.
Reflecting on practices reflection
Critical reflection is an important tool that teachers can use to evaluate their various methods and strategies. Teaching practice experience clarified for me the importance of reflecting on my teaching. During my teaching practices, I used to reflect critically and immediately after each lesson I taught. Thus, I had the chance to improve the needed areas. I used to give a brief description about the lessons, and then mention the strengths points. I believe that looking at the good side by thinking about the good things that happened during the lessons motivates me to do the better in my future teaching. Moreover, I used to sit with my MSTs to discuss and share ideas, which helped me a lot with the preparation of my future lessons in which I knew what I needed to focus on.
Evidence
Samples of reflections about what I have done in two of my lessons in my teaching practices
My best practices that I experienced
Teaching practice was the best experience that I obtained through the journey of my study. I had the opportunity to improve many areas in each semester. I enjoyed my teaching practice especially with kids. They simply make you feel like you have reached the top of the world when you see that they are working hard and want to come to school because of you. Nothing beats this feeling and just thinking about it makes me happy. Nevertheless, this does not mean that I did not enjoy teaching teenagers. Although teaching them was more difficult and I knew that I cannot change the world for them, I tried to equip them for what it has in store for them and I am proud about what I have done. However, I believe that my best practices were in semester two and six and my reflections on these semesters illustrate the reasons.
This was my second experience on teaching primary level. I had this practice in Fatima Bint Abdelmalek School in Kalba city. I taught grade two girls students and I considered this practice as my first experience on teaching because in semester one, we were required to teach only one stage of the lesson. Unlike semester two, where we taught full lessons. This means, we needed to plan and prepare activities, strategies and materials for the three stages of each lesson. I think this was one of my best practices because I was a novice teacher with very little experiences and skills and during this practice I had the opportunity to learn several important things.
First, considering the learning objectives while planning for the activities. I used to think about the activities without focusing on my learning objectives, which affected students learning. I was unable to know if I achieved my learning objectives or not because most of the time my assessments were not relevant to the learning objectives. Second, I noticed the importance of setting classroom rules to manage students during the lessons. I think I was lucky because my MST used to set classrooms at the beginning of each lesson. Thus, I did not face any classroom management issues because students already knew the rules that they needed to follow when I taught them. Finally, I understood the effectiveness of playing on kids learning process and improving their performance. Implementing learning games allowed me to engage students and motivate them to learn, hence they were able to improve their performance.
Reflection on semester 2 teaching practice
Students were paying attention when my MST was explaining the classroom rules
Students were engaged and motivated to present their work while applying learning games
Evidence
This was my first experience on teaching high school level. I had this practice in Mudab School in Al Fujairah city. I taught grade ten students and they were girls. I considered this teaching practice as one of my best practices because it was better than my expectations. I was very concerned about going through this experience because I always believed that students at this stage are difficult to deal with and nothing stratified them. Actually, this idea has totally changed after this experience. Students were very respectful and polite and I believe this was because of the strategies that my MST followed with them and I did the same thing.
The first strategy that I learned from her was building a good relationship with students. My MST advised me to treat students as adults because students at this stages believe that they are mature and the effectiveness of her strategy was obvious on students' behavior. From this point, I believed that the teacher's relationship with students has a crucial role on students' behavior. If students loved the teacher, they will love her subject and strive to advance their learning to obtain better grades. In addition, a have learned the importance of implementing diverse approaches that encourages students' independent learning. For example, applying inquiry-based approach in which students need to investigate various topics by themselves with my guidance. I noticed that students preferred this type of approaches more, they were engaged and showed enthusiasm to learn. I believe this was because students at this level act like adults and they prefer doing things independently.
Reflection on semester 6 teaching practice
Students while presenting the information they came up with about Jaguar animal
Students while exploring about Jaguar animal independently and creating a presentation
Evidence
Weekly journals
In our teaching practices, we used to write weekly journals to reflect on the most important events that happened in each week, the duties that I carried on, the important things that I have learned and my future plans. I have provided some weekly journal samples from my online teaching practice, which was in semester eight.