Journaling has a critical role to play as you move through your clinical experiences. Journaling provides opportunities for you to reflect on the contextual factors of the school, and your understanding of the occurrences that you observe; it is not a repository for minute-to-minute recording of incidents. Further, journaling promotes your ability to reflect on your experiences in and out of the P – 12 classroom, and to share your impressions of the events in which you engage with faculty who are entrusted with your guidance and supervision. Journal Expectations Timeliness: Teacher candidate submits weekly journal entries as requested without reminders. Critical Thinking: Teacher candidate responds to journal prompts with substantial information demonstrating 1) application of knowledge, 2) connections between experience and content taught in preparation program. Substantive Entry: Teacher candidate submits organized and logically sequenced journal and reflection responses. The entry contains detailed information, connections and reflections of experience. Writing: Teacher candidate communicates effectively in writing using correct grammar, punctuation and spelling. Reflection: Teacher candidate deeply reflects on his/her own practice with evidence of analysis, synthesis or evaluation. Provides detailed examples and makes connections between practice, research and theory. Instructions: 1. Use the weekly template, linked below, to respond to the journal and reflection writing prompt.2. Save (Save As) your journal entry in a location where you will be able to retrieve it for submission and reference. 3. E-mail your weekly journal entry as an attachment to your clinical supervisor. Submit your journal entries as requested by your seminar instructor.4. Write your journal entry using academic language. Proof read your work. Remember: Do not use student, teacher or other staff names in any journal entry. The journal is used to build an understanding of community, school and classroom factors; and to provide an opportunity to reflect on your professional practice and observations. It is not appropriate to pass judgement. Each journal and reflection prompt supports candidates’ growth in the COE Competencies and are tagged with the competency(s) to which they are aligned. Week Clinical Experience Journal Prompts Week 1 Journal Prompt: Provide a descriptive overview of your district, school, classroom, and curriculum. How does the environment support the learning that is taking place in the classroom? (C3) NJ School Performance Reports Community Data Week 2 Journal Prompt: Detail the professional expectations the school district has for teachers.How do these expectations support the New Jersey Professional Standards for Teachers and the National Education Association’s Code of Ethics of the Education Profession? (C16) Week 3 Journal Prompt: Detail the interests, strengths, needs and developmental domains (cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional and physical) of your P-12 learners. (C1) Week 4 Journal Prompt: Detail each classroom management strategy being used in the classroom by you and your clinical educator. How do these strategies help develop a safe and positive community of learning? (C3) Week 5 Journal Prompt: What College and Career Ready Practices are being practiced in the classroom as part of the general lessons? What are students doing to practice the College and Career Ready Practice(s)? (C18) Week 6 Reflection Prompt: What researched-based instructional/learning strategy was the most successful and why? (C11) Week 7 Reflection Prompt: What excites and worries you about transitioning from a student to a professional? (C16) Week 8 Journal Prompt: What digital resources have you accessed to research and select teaching and learning strategies to use in your teaching? How did you prompt learner responses to demonstrate understanding of the content being taught? Provide specific examples. (C7) Week 9 Journal Prompt: As it relates to learner differences, what about your teaching are you most proud or satisfied? What formative and summative assessment have you observed to support learner achievement as part of the teaching and learning continuum? (C2, C9) Week 10 Journal Prompt: What type of questions and questioning techniques do you use in your lessons? How do your questions and questioning techniques build learner knowledge and understanding? (C12) Week 11 Journal Prompt: Select one lesson taught, reflect and write on what went well and what needs improvement. What evidence are you using to determine what went well and what needs improvement? If you could re-teach the lesson to the same group of learners what would you change to support learner achievement? (C14) Week 12 Reflection Prompt: How did you provide feedback to learners and how did you engage learners in using the feedback? (C10) Week 13 Reflection Prompt: Think about a lesson you taught that was not observed by your clinical supervisor. What feedback would you give yourself about the lesson? (C13) Week 14 Journal Prompt: Speak to your clinical educator about teaching responsibilities that are outside of the classroom. In what professional community activities have you participated, including but not limited to grade level meetings, department meetings, IEP meetings, lunch duty, etc.? And how did these influence your teaching practice or your understanding of the profession? (C15)
