Professional Practice
3. Plan and implement effective teaching and learning
While teaching has progressed so has my planning. I have been able to gain ideas and a variety of lesson plans from my mentor teachers over the years. I have quickly realised the importance of weekly planners. By setting out what task should be completed in each lesson block show what needs to be done and helps reach certain goals. I used this weekly planner which greatly helped when teaching a week on narrative writing. It allowed me to set what level they should be up to by the end of each day and still fitting in the numeracy and specialist lessons.
While weekly planners have been a crucial element to my planning, i still greatly benefit from a more detailed daily planner. These planners include tuning in activities, the main focus, winding up activity, materials, prior learning, assessment and the ACARA learning standards.
While weekly planners have been a crucial element to my planning, i still greatly benefit from a more detailed daily planner. These planners include tuning in activities, the main focus, winding up activity, materials, prior learning, assessment and the ACARA learning standards.
4. Create maintain supportive and safe learning environment
To maintain a supportive and safe learning environment each teacher in all classrooms and specialists class create a essential agreement with the students. These agreements include agreements that the students believe are needed in the classroom for lessons to run smoothly and to keep each student safe and happy. This year ipads were introduced into year 3. Before they arrived i had a significant role in leading the discussion on our essential agreements regarding the ipads. I have also created a supportive learning environment by building quality relationships with my students. This included getting to know their interests and backgrounds as well as knowing how each student learns and particular needs they may have such as sitting at a certain desk to increase concentration and knowing which students will need explicit teaching and assistance. By building these relationships I have enabled the students to communicate with me easily, which is very beneficial when trying to discover behavioural or learning issues. I create an environment which allows the students to feel comfortable to express their opinions, ideas and thoughts. Using the think pair share technique allows the more quieter students to discuss their ideas without feeling the pressure of everyone listening. I recognize that all students have different abilities and make a conscious effort to acknowledge and value their effort instead of abilities where necessary. I have done this through commenting on their work and verbal acknowledgment. Lastly, I accept all opinions and values and assure that all student’s opinions are heard and respected.
5. Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
Over the course of this year it was a priority of mine to gain more experience in assessing student's learning and documenting their progress. Throughout my placement I have been exposed to many different methods of assessment and have witnessed ones that work and don’t work. The assessment i have done over the course of my placement is as follows:·
- Used student’s responses to open-ended questions to evaluate their understanding.
- Undertaking informal conversations with students, this enables me to see how they are coping with the task and in turn effects my planning and teaching.
- Produce activities to assess for learning. For example, in a unit of work I designed on mental computation strategies I created an activity that allowed the students to use 3 different strategies, which had been taught throughout the week. This assessment task enabled me to see what strategy they were most comfortable using and which ones needed further work.
- Conducted daily reading records using a checklist that focused on their fluency, self correction, comprehension, expression and attempting unfamiliar words (as displayed in picture above).
- Taking anecdotal notes on student’s progression, concentration and ability to work in group or partnership settings. I did this particularly when working in a partnership for their unit of inquiry presentation. This assisted me in marking their presentation when completed and providing personal feedback.
- Provided peer assessment tasks and opportunities to vocalise a positive element about a peer’s work and something they could improve on.
- Assisted in conducting formal assessment practices such as high frequency word spelling test and NAPLAN
- Corrected draft copies of student's narratives. I provided spelling and grammar correction and also asked questions to prompt further thinking abut the flow and meaning on their story.
- Developed a rubric which the teachers and I used for their summative assessment on their unit of inquiry (pictured below).
I was faced with many challenges while conducting these assessments are learnt some vital skills. When marking a student of lower ability, it is vital not give too many corrections to avoid disheartening the students. On work that has a vast amount of errors i have to learnt to pick one particular type of spelling pattern of grammatical concept to focus on. Eg. only correcting frequently used words or the use of capital letters. I have discovered the importance of anecdotal note taking to provide accurate feedback and to be aware of each students progress. I have also discovered that by correcting students work in each class reducing my work load in the future and allows me to quickly see whether the students have understood the concepts. I have learnt that without feedback there would be no learning process which i regard as high importance as stated in my teaching and learning philosophy.