The practicum plan was an assignment that had good intentions, but needs improvement. There were many benefits to the practicum plan as well as many disadvantages.
Advantages:
-Helped me to organize the assignments that were due this semester and develop a timeframe for when the assignments should be completed.
-Helped me to start brainstorming ideas on how to meet the requirements of the assignments. For example what topics should be covered in a lesson. Some assignments were better suited towards my civics class I taught and others toward my World History class. The practicum plan helped me to split up assignment between classes I was teaching.
-Helped me to see which assignments overlapped between classes. Some lessons taught met assignments from multiple classes.
-Learning goals were extremely helpful in targeting areas of my teaching that I wanted to improve and how I was going to reach those goals.
Disadvantages:
-Very time consuming and repetitive and perhaps required too much detail such as asking for CSOs. Much of the practicum plan consisted of copying the practicum checklist.
-Requires to plan out the entire semester during the first couple weeks. My mentor teacher found the practicum plan to be frustrating because he did not have lesson plans developed for the entire semester.
-After completeling my practicum plan I did not refer back to it very often.
Overall, I do believe the practicum plan was beneficial, however, there are some changes that could be made to make it more effective. One idea is to break down the practicum plan into two assignments. Perhaps make a plan from Janruary to February and then develop a second plan for the months of March and April. This will allow you to see what you have completed and what still needs to be completed and will provide a sort of progress report. Secondly, I would not require CSOs to be listed, rather what topics will be covered instead. Last, reduce the practicum plan instead of having students list the same items two or three times in differnt charts.
