MY EXPERIENCE AS A PHYSICAL SCIENCE TEACHER DURING INTERNSHIP

 

MY EXPERIENCE AS A PHYSICAL SCIENCE TEACHER DURING INTERNSHIP

As a part of the B.Ed. curriculum, I had an opportunity to undergo an internship program at St. Augustine’s High school, Kaloor, the same school where I did my induction. So, I was a little relieved as the school environment, teachers and students were already familiar to me.  During the scheduled period for the internship, the whole world was under the spell of the covid-19 virus. This pandemic condition forced us to conduct the internship program in online mode.  I got charge of standard 9 for taking chemistry classes. The internship lasted from 07/10/2020 to 12/01/2021 and as a part of that, I got admitted to the class WhatsApp group of standard 9 as a member. I had started preparing lesson plans for the chapter Redox reaction and Rate of chemical reactions.  Since the government arranged video classes for the students of the Kerala state board through the official educational channel VICTORS, I have prepared supplementary video classes based on the lesson plans that I prepared.  These video classes were uploaded to the YouTube channel that I have created for the internship and shared the link of those videos with the students through their WhatsApp group.  Because of the lack of laboratory facilities, I felt difficulty in finding appropriate videos for some of the topics involving experiments. I tried to make use of the chemical substances available in my house for performing demonstrations for the video classes. I prepared worksheets for the student’s incorporation of two or more topics discussed in the video classes. The students wrote the answers to these questions and uploaded them in the same group for correction. I went through those answers and gave proper feedback to the students. Along with that I prepared answer keys and uploaded them after two days of uploading the worksheet for further references.  I prepared lesson plans for the three chapters Redox reactions, The Periodic Table, and Acid, Base, and Salts. video classes were recorded for those lesson plans and shared with students. This experience of writing lesson plans for online classes allowed getting familiarised with ICT techniques like Nearpod and Phet simulations. During the internship period, I arranged different activities like a science quiz on world science day [November 10th], a class on art forms of Kerala on the day of Kerala Piravi [November 1st], and a quiz on patriotism on Children’s day [November 14 th]. I made use of applications like Kahoot and Nearpod for conducting the quizzes. Along with the recording of video classes for the students, I had to take live classes with the peers parallelly for improving my teaching skills. I have used the zoom application for taking the classes. During the time of these live classes, my teacher educator, and peers provided immediate feedbacks for improving the skills.

This internship was a period transformation for me, during this time I learn to adapt to the situation that encounters unexpectedly in life, during the period of internship I didn’t get enough time to think about what I gained from each day’s work but now I can clearly say that this internship truly sharpened my teaching skills, technical skills, communication skills, confidence level, inquiry skills, creativity. I Am so grateful to God almighty, my teacher educator sister Dr. Josephine Joseph, my peers for molding me into what I am today. I am so thankful to sister Daisy, my teacher in charge at St. Augustine school who always supported and guided me.