Practicum — EDPRAC 612
What the 2026 handbook actually requires of me, what is simply information, and what belongs to my associate teacher and professional supervisor. Working forms are linked below; the audit is honest about what is done and what is not.
Source: University of Auckland, Faculty of Arts and Education. (2026). EDPRAC 612 GDTSE Practicum Handbook, updated 17 July 2026 (40 pp.).
1. Who owns what
The handbook is forty pages, but only part of it is work for me. Sorting it first prevents effort going into forms that somebody else signs, and stops genuinely required items being missed because they were buried in policy prose.
✍️ Mine to complete
Things I produce, keep current, or initiate. Nobody does these for me.
- Practicum File — a hard-copy folder, kept up to date, available to ATs and my professional supervisor. §4.1, p. 9
- Teaching Experience Log — signed by the main AT weekly. §8, pp. 27–34
- Full lesson plans given to ATs before teaching, on the handbook template. §2.3 & §8, pp. 24–25
- Observation charts — at least one General Observation; others chosen to suit the class. §3.2, pp. 21–23
- Booking the professional supervisor visit — I take the initiative, by email, with times and period structure. §4.2, p. 9
- The inquiry — two iterations, two data sets, recorded presentation. §7, p. 16
- Evidence portfolio — kept "live" all year for the capstone. §7, p. 16
- Leave form, if any day is missed, plus notifying school and Practicum Office. §6.1, p. 14
- Camp/field trip permission email to the Secondary Practicum Leader before committing. §6.6, pp. 15
📖 Information only
Read once, act on if the situation arises. No artefact to produce.
- Key personnel and who to contact for what. §1, p. 3
- Aims of practicum and the five learning outcomes. §2, p. 4
- How to observe; the Good & Brophy caution that student response, not teacher behaviour, is the point. §3.1, p. 7
- How reports are written and submitted — and that I do not negotiate their content with the school. §4.3, p. 10
- The six-point achievement scale ATs and supervisors use. §4.4, p. 10
- What to do if there are concerns, and the support services list. §4.5, pp. 10–11
- Professionalism, safe interactions with students, working with colleagues. §5, pp. 12–13
- Policies: leave, disability, relief teaching, exam supervision, co-curricular. §6, pp. 14–15
- The Standards for the Teaching Profession and how attestation works. §7.1, pp. 17–19
🤝 Theirs to complete
My associate teacher, professional supervisor or the Faculty owns these. My job is to make them possible and to file the results.
- Formative Lesson Observation Sheets — the AT completes these, ideally at least five times. I supply copies and file every one. §9, pp. 36–40
- Mid-practicum report — AT written, an early signal of adequate progress. §4.3, p. 10
- Summative end-of-practicum report — AT written, submitted to the Practicum Office. §4.3, p. 10
- Professional supervisor's report — written after the observed lesson and after viewing my Practicum File. §4.2–4.3, pp. 9–10
- Weekly signature on my Teaching Experience Log — I bring it to them. §8, pp. 27–34
2. Working forms
Every form the handbook supplies as a flat PDF, rebuilt as something usable — fillable on screen, saved in the browser as I type, and printing clean for the file. The provenance of each is recorded on the form itself.
Lesson Plan Template
The handbook template field-for-field: design dimensions, the timed pedagogy table, homework and reflection. Add rows as the lesson needs.
Mine to complete 👁️Observation Charts 1–3
General Observation (required), GRAPES, and Class Management / Transitions / Misbehaviour, with the confidentiality rule stated up front.
Mine to complete 🗓️Teaching Experience Log
All eight placement weeks from my real timetable — the Week 2 absence, the 28 Aug staff-only day and the 27 Aug change to Social Studies only — with a weekly AT signature line.
Mine to complete 📋Formative Observation Sheet
The AT's feedback form with the Faculty's row-by-row guidance folded in on screen. Print and hand over; the completed sheets come back to the file.
My AT completes 🪶Bilingual Planning Template
My own te reo Māori planning template — kupu hou, tikanga, place-based connection. Feeds the te reo row on the AT's sheet; it does not replace the handbook template.
Mine — supplementary2a. Structured reflection
A reflective record kept on every teaching day of the placement, synthesised into weekly professional reflection organised as what went well · what went less well · where to next, plus the catalogue of classroom routines I am taking into my own practice. The daily entries stay private; colleagues appear by role, and no student is identifiable.
2b. Lesson plans, written up
Three lessons I actually teach, moved off my run-sheets and onto the required template. The run-sheet is what I hold while teaching; this is what an associate teacher receives beforehand, because the sheet they assess me against scores the intended learning outcomes, the concept/skill split and the assessment for learning — none of which a run-sheet carries. Curriculum objectives are quoted verbatim from the live curriculum set, under both the 2007 NZC and Te Mātaiaho, listed separately rather than blended — because both remain current while Te Mātaiaho phases in, and my associate teacher can point to whichever the department records.
Y9 — "Which war are we actually studying?"
Opening lesson of WW1 & National Identity. Diagnostic sort, repairing the WW1/WW2 blur, and Austria-Hungary as the concept to get right.
Ready for my AT ⚖️Y10 — "What is a right?"
Opening lesson of Rights, Resistance & Māori Resurgence. Four questions for every claim, with tino rangatiratanga as the distinction that must not collapse.
Ready for my AT 🎶Y10 — "Sing it in English"
The 1999 anthem as a test case for the unit's four questions, then the te reo revitalisation inquiry finished to hand-in standard. Every historical claim quoted from NZHistory.
Ready for my AT · Monday 📋Y9 — Evidence Bank (WW1 perspectives)
One A4 landscape per student: four voices, four rows, pre-seeded with verbatim lines from Te Ara/DNZB and NZHistory. The yellow row — what each person could not know yet — is the assessment's hidden criterion.
Print for Monday 🖼️Y9 — WW1 Perspectives deck (45 slides)
Four voices, image-led. Te Puea Hērangi and Āpirana Ngata now carry their own sourced words and dated actions — and the slide that stops it being goodie versus baddie: they became friends in 1927.
Teach from · three lessons 💻Y11 — "What Excellence actually adds"
AS92006 exam preparation. The six-link chain, where the grade boundaries sit, and the same feature written three ways. Taught in weeks 1–4, before the placement became Social Studies only.
Completed · weeks 1–43. Practicum File — required contents, audited
The handbook is specific that the Practicum File is "a hard-copy file or folder", and that my professional supervisor must view it in order to complete my report. That makes it a different artefact from this digital portfolio, which is the "live" evidence repository for the EDPROFST 614 capstone. Items below are marked against what this portfolio can actually show — a paper-only item is not a gap, it is simply something this site cannot verify.
| Required item | Status | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|
| Class descriptions, special features, organisation — class lists, timetable | Assembled | Written up on Tab 1 of the file — classes, rooms, rolls, units, and the 26 Aug change of subject. Class lists and both timetables are paper only. |
| School setting, special features, organisation — map, bell times, notices, calendar | Assembled | Tab 2: bell schedule (both timetables), term calendar, KAMAR communications, structures. Campus map and the printed calendar are paper only. |
| School policies and procedures as appropriate | Assembled | Tab 3: ten procedures as practised at Fraser. Staff Manual extracts are paper only. |
| Teaching log recording activity in and around the school | Signatures pending | The log is built from my real timetable for all eight weeks. What remains is the primary AT's weekly signature (paper), the code legend, and week 1–4 topics. |
| Long-term planning (unit plans) | Assembled | Tab 5: one unit overview per class — Year 9 WW1 & National Identity, Year 10 Civil Rights: A NZ Case Study, and the Year 11 HCI unit filed as completed weeks 1–4 work. |
| Lesson plans and resources | Assembled | Tab 6: four plans on the handbook template with the 25 Aug observed lesson marked, plus the decks, evidence bank and handouts made for them. |
| Assessment information and record keeping — e-asTTle data, exit cards, achievement data | Partial | Tab 7 states what exists: the Year 10 inquiry hand-in record and an observed formative-assessment cycle. Exit cards from the rebuilt map lesson and any AT-shared achievement data are still to collect. |
| Focused observations and analysis of data | Assembled | Tab 8: a General Observation (Year 10, 17 Aug) and a Class Management chart (Year 9, 17 Aug) written from in-room notes, descriptive not evaluative, with analysis of what I have carried into my own teaching. |
| Formative observation sheets / notes written by my associate teacher(s) | Outstanding | None returned as of 2 Sep. Form supplied to both ATs; the handbook's figure is at least five. Each sheet goes into Tab 9 as it comes back. |
| Evaluations and reflections | Assembled | Tab 10: the post-observation record with the supervisor's feedback and my own evaluation, the goal checkpoint, and the structured reflection. The daily record is shared with the supervisor directly. |
4. What to do first
Ordered by deadline pressure rather than by size. Three of these depend on other people, so they go first.
What unblocks the professional supervisor's report
The supervisor observed on 25 August and followed up on 31 August: she cannot complete or sign the report until she has viewed a current Practicum File and the daily reflection record. The file now exists at the link above. The rest is in order of what closes first.
- Share the daily-reflections document with the supervisor (viewer access, University email) and reply to her 31 August message with the link to the Practicum File.
- Ask the primary associate teacher this week for the weekly teaching-log signatures and any formative observation sheets not yet returned; ask the supporting associate teacher for hers.
- Print the paper-only items into the folder: class lists, both timetables, campus map, term calendar, Staff Manual extracts, the Week 7 KAMAR notice, the in-room observation notes.
- Collect the inquiry data set — exit tickets or three pieces of student work from the rebuilt 1914 map lesson — before 25 September. CIA Part 4's second iteration cannot be captured after the placement ends.
- Confirm the code-column legend for the teaching log with the EDPRAC 612 lecturer, and confirm the mid-practicum report has been submitted.
5. The inquiry and the capstone
How can I engage the learners in my classroom?
Two iterations are required, one on each practicum, using the inquiry cycle from The New Zealand Curriculum (2007, p. 35) and Sinnema and Aitken (2016). Two data sets are needed — and feedback from my associate teacher and professional supervisor counts as one.
This is the part of the handbook where my portfolio is already ahead. The engagement question is exactly the question my CIA work answers, and the required "live" evidence repository is the thing this portfolio has been all year.
| Capstone requirement | Status | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|
| Inquiry iteration 1 (Practicum 1) | Done | CIA Part 1 — the engagement question, framed and evidenced. |
| Inquiry iteration 2 (Practicum 2) | In progress | CIA Part 2 sets out three strategies and the theories they enact. What will strengthen it is placement evidence of the strategies actually running — and the AT feedback sheets are the natural second data set. |
| Two data sets | One secured | Student work and task design are well represented on the evidence page. The second set — AT and supervisor feedback — depends on actions 1 and 2 above. This is the clearest reason those two are urgent. |
| Recorded presentation to Canvas | Scaffolded | CIA Part 4 exists. Due in the period immediately after the October break. |
| Evidence portfolio linked to Our Code, Our Standards | Strong | The standards page works through all six Standards. The handbook's advice — collect and carefully label everything, keep the Standards on hand — is already the operating model here. |
All requirements, quotations and page references on this page are drawn from the University of Auckland Faculty of Arts and Education 2026 EDPRAC 612 GDTSE Practicum Handbook (updated 17 July 2026). Status judgements describe what this portfolio can evidence; items marked Paper file are held in the hard-copy Practicum File and are deliberately not reproduced here, because they contain information about students and staff that confidentiality requires be kept out of any shareable record.