Practicum 2 — structured reflection
Fraser High School · Years 9–13 · Social Studies and Digital Technologies · 4 August – 25 September 2026
Weekly professional reflection, organised as what went well · what went less well · where to next.
How this was built
I kept a reflective record on every teaching day of this placement, written during and immediately after lessons rather than reconstructed later. This page is the professional synthesis of that record: the daily entries stay private, and what appears here is what I judge to be of professional value.
Colleagues appear by role, never by name. Nothing here evaluates another teacher's practice — where an observation shaped my own thinking, it is written as something I took, not as a judgement of the person I took it from. No student is identifiable.
1. The arc, in one paragraph
I arrived with a split load across two learning areas and spent the first fortnight mostly observing. Illness cost me the whole of week two. Weeks three and four were the turning point: my observation notes stopped being descriptions of what teachers did and started being an argument about why particular routines work. In week four my placement was restructured to Social Studies only, which was difficult at the time and, on the evidence of my own record, the right shape for the learning.
2. Week by week
Week 1 — orientation · 4–8 August
Observation across Tourism, Media Studies, Digital Technologies and Social Studies. First teaching: a Level 1 Digital Technologies lesson on usability heuristics, for which I built a five-page printed resource at short notice.
Went well
- Observation notes were specific from day one — times, exact teacher phrasing, student response — rather than general impressions.
- Taught within 48 hours of arriving, on a standard I had not previously met, and authored my own resource for it rather than borrowing one.
- Noticed pastoral decisions and their reasoning, not just instructional moves.
Went less well
- Non-contact periods were frequent and I had no plan for them; several were spent unproductively before I decided what they were for.
- I judged lessons against how I would have taught them before I understood the class, the year's prior learning, or the teacher's longer plan.
Where to next
- Treat every non-contact as claimed time with a named purpose.
- Ask about the unit before evaluating the lesson.
Week 2 — absence · 10–14 August
Absent for the full week through illness. Reported under the programme's absence provisions; the attendance consequence is recorded in my practicum file.
Went well
- Reported promptly rather than attempting to work through it.
Went less well
- A five-day gap in a fixed-length placement is not recoverable, and it cost me the observation time that would have built mentor relationships early.
Where to next
- Confirm in writing that the attendance requirement is satisfied, rather than assuming it.
Week 3 — observation becomes analysis · 17–21 August
The strongest week of the placement for professional learning. My notes shifted from recording what happened to explaining why it worked, and I began collecting transferable routines rather than admiring individual lessons.
Went well
- Identified consistency of routine as the single highest-leverage practice I observed, and evidenced it: a loud, distracted class settled within minutes purely because the opening sequence never varies.
- Recognised that a class's assessment structure — proofreading conventions and a scaffolded paragraph model — was near-identical to what I already teach, which told me where my existing practice already fits this department.
- Generated a genuine subject-specific idea: using Biggs' "Humpty Dumpty" argument about borrowed meaning to make the integration of mātauranga Māori into digital technologies honest rather than decorative, connected to current Aotearoa discourse on digital sovereignty.
- Caught a precision point worth teaching: "the Great War" means large, not good, and saying so is the difference between a name and a misconception.
Went less well
- I recorded a concern about my own placement conditions for a week without raising it with anyone who could act on it.
- Some entries assessed a colleague's practice at length. That is not what a reflective record is for, and writing it did not make me a better teacher.
Where to next
- Raise a concern at the point it is first noticed, through the person whose responsibility it is.
- Write reflections about my own decisions, not other people's.
Week 4 — the restructure · 24–28 August
Taught an observed Year 9 lesson on the causes of the First World War. Mid-week my placement was restructured to Social Studies only. Attended a teacher-only day on metacognition and feedback.
Went well
- The observed lesson was planned to the required template and I was genuinely looking forward to teaching it — the first time in the placement I wrote that down.
- After the restructure I had a coherent load in one learning area across two year levels, which is stronger evidence than fragments from two subjects.
- Took the professional-learning day seriously: feedback must be specific and actionable, and feedforward must name the route to the solution rather than only the fault.
Went less well
- A meeting I had asked for went badly, and it went badly partly because I had accumulated concerns for weeks without raising any of them. Raising them all at once, to the person least able to hear them that way, was my error of judgement, not an accident of timing.
- My own record shows the pattern clearly: in one learning area I wrote about pedagogy; in the other I counted off-task students. I had disengaged from a room while still sitting in it.
Where to next
- Repair the professional relationship directly and without seeking anything in return.
- Treat the remaining weeks as the placement, not as the salvage of one.
- Make the opening routine automatic in my own teaching before the placement ends.
Weeks 5–8 · 31 August – 25 September
To be completed from the daily record as the placement proceeds.
Went well
- [ ]
Went less well
- [ ]
Where to next
- [ ]
3. Practice I am taking with me
The most useful thing this placement produced is not a lesson but a set of routines I watched work under pressure, in classes that were not mine, with students who had no particular reason to cooperate.
- The opening sequence never varies. Same order, first lesson of the year to the last: chairs down, learning intention on the board, books and pens out, roll and notices read while students write the date. The consistency is doing the work, not the content.
- A retrieval quiz as the entry task. Short, answered against prior learning, marked immediately. It occupies the arrival window instead of fighting it.
- Praise the behaviour you want, out loud, at the start. Naming the students who came in and got ready is quicker and more effective than correcting the ones who did not.
- Never shame a late arrival. Catch them up in one sentence and move on. A student who is settled two minutes after arriving has had a lesson; a student who is embarrassed has not.
- Redirect a complaint to the stakes, once. Answering "why are we doing this" with the credit or the assessment closes it without a debate.
- Some things are not behaviour. A student asleep in period one may have reasons that have nothing to do with the lesson. Judgement about which is which is part of the job.
- Test routines are taught, not demanded. In a class with established conventions, silence during an assessment did not have to be requested once.
- Give the finishers something. A low-stakes task on the board after an assessment protects the students still working.
- Tools are allowed when the task needs them. Say so explicitly rather than leaving students to guess whether using a phone is cheating.
- An open-book assessment rewards the students who kept the notes, which is the habit worth building anyway.
4. What this placement taught me about myself
Two things, and the record is what shows them rather than my memory of it.
The first is that the value I get from a placement tracks the strength of my mentor relationships more than anything else about the school. I wrote that down in week one as an observation about research; by week four it was the explanation of my own experience. Building those relationships is my responsibility as much as anyone's, and in one case I did not do it.
The second is that I raise concerns late and then all at once. Every difficulty in this placement that became serious was visible in my own writing a week or more before it did. The professional skill I most need is not analysis — the analysis was accurate and early. It is saying the thing at the time, to the person whose job it is, in a form they can act on.
Evidence not yet claimed
- mentor and professional supervisor feedback on my teaching;
- student work and assessment evidence from the units I taught;
- what changed in my practice between the first observed lesson and the last;
- weeks 5–8 of the daily record.
These stay blank until the evidence exists.