Professional Knowledge
"Teachers draw on a body of professional knowledge and research to respond to the needs of their students within their educational contexts." AISTL STANDARDS
My students
"Teachers know their students well, including their diverse linguistic, cultural and religious backgrounds. They know how the experiences that students bring to their classroom affect their continued learning. They know how to structure their lessons to meet the physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of their students." AISTL STANDARDS
Students develop in many difference ways. This includes physical, social and cognitive development. The many diverse ways students develop in these areas are all influenced by the different backgrounds students come from. Not one student that steps in to the classroom on their first day will have the exact same experience as another student. As a teacher it is up to me to make sure the student, regardless of their background, has an equal opportunity to develop and learn. Click to the right of the slide show to see more pictures.
Creating a safe, inclusive and effective learning environment
Circle Time
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Giving students the chance to explore the different experiences they have had throughout the week, both within and outside class.
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Builds social skills in presenting in front of their peers and expressing opinions and active listening.
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Allows me as the teacher to understand how students gaged the work they had completed in the past week and their own self efficacy to complete tasks.
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Circle time only works after a safe and inclusive environment is established in the classroom.
Gardners’ theory of Multiple Intelligences
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Included above are some graphic organisers, mind maps, which have different activities for Psychology classes for each intelligence.
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In reflection of these activities, I have found they work very well to keep students engaged and give each student a chance to excel and become an ‘expert’ for those types of activities.
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It is also important for me to keep a graph of students and the types of intelligences they are. This allows me to offer study help to individual students in their learning style. I do this by getting students to answer a questionnaire and keep data of their scores in a graph.
It is important to me as explored in my philosophy of teaching that students feel included, safe and supported within my classroom. I try to maintain this through developing a differentiated classroom that alters between whole group, small group and individual instruction. A key importance I place is on cooperative learning.
In line with Johnson and Johnson’s (1993) explanation of cooperative learning, I try to allow students to work in small groups to allow them to maximise their own learning and each other’s learning.
Cooperative learning tasks
Multiply and Merge task Post box Task
Pair work with interview
An example was when I used this with my dance students.
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Students were paired up
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Students were to pick a phrase from their technique solo and teach the other student.
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Students then were to interview each other on the process they took to create the phrase of movement.
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Students then compared their movement creation process to that of their peer and how they would use what they learnt.
In order to create a learning environment that is fair to all students, especially to support participation and learning of students with disabilities, I have experienced the importance of establishing a Student Support Group. As a teacher there are particular strategies a teacher can use in assisting a student, for example with a physical disability. This includes making sure the classroom is set out appropriately.
I use this graph as an easy way to see which students may excel at which different learning style tasks. Also who I can give an 'expert' status too within groups when completing tasks.
My Subjects
My copy of VCAA Psychology Study Design with annotations to what content will be taught and brainstorming activities using Gardners' Multiple Intelligences.
Review and Request reflection activity. Students work collaboratively to answer review questions. If they are unable to answer the question they circle the sad face and as a group we answer the question.
Posters using The Truman Show to discuss ethics in research.
Students reading each others posters and voting.
The students were to read each others posters and had 5 stickers to vote with, they voted on the information given and the presentation of the information.
Dance students learning the phrase created with the dance terminology.
Year 11 Psychology students Menatl Illness SAC. Students were given a choice of which mental illness to focus on and were giving time to research all the information they needed to be able to write the SAC up in class time.
Teachers know the content of their subjects and curriculum. They know and understand the fundamental concepts, structure and enquiry processes relevant to the programs they teach. Teachers understand what constitutes effective, developmentally appropriate strategies in their learning and teaching programs and use this knowledge to make the content meaningful to students.-AITSL STANDARDS
It is important as a teacher to have a firm grasp of the particular subjects and curriculum. Throughout the planning and implementation of lessons and units of work, it is essential that teachers understand the fundamental knowledge and concepts of the subjects and have strong teaching strategies. It is through the enactment of these strategies the content becomes meaningful to students and enhances curriculum learning opportunities.
Teaching strategies for content heavy areas:
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VCAA study Design - is fundamental in my planning to have as a checklist of content being taught and brainstorming activities and scaffolding tasks. . Students also use as a checklist to understand that it is an outcome-focused curriculum.
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Reflective tasks- Review and Request (R & R) example. Allowing students to review all the content learnt over the unit of work. Reflection of student learning of the content and areas for improvement.
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Dance Terminology Phrases-different to just memorizing a glossary of terms, I choreographer a short phrase they learn which demonstrates the key terms. Possibility for improvement would be getting students to choreograph the phrases themselves to develop a deeper level of understanding according to Blooms taxonomy.
Content should be organised in terms of building up the students’ knowledge. After much reflection on the way I construct my lesson plans, I have moved into a more explicit lesson plan.
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Introduction-this may include revision from a previous class or introducing a new topic. During this time it should be explicitly stated what students will be learning in the class.
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Elaboration- to elaborate on the content that has been stated the student will be learning, this may include; examples, note taking of the key ideas of the content and possible modelling.
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Practice-this is allowing the students to complete a task and develop a deeper level of understanding. This may include collaborative learning tasks, or individual tasks. This may include a number of tasks for students to complete so they don’t lose engagement, and also can be differentiated to cater for all types of learning styles.
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Conclusion-It is important to conclude the lesson, this can be done through reflection in either journals or questions, which gage student feedback and again make sure the key terms have been explicitly learnt.
For an example of my explicit lesson plan for a
Year 9 Performace class please click on this button.
Planning for a Unit of work
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Working with other teachers is essential throughout the VCE level as well as any curriculum.
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Determining a timeline- setting dates and working back from them to determine how long you have to teach the content. This allows you then to break down time into lesson and lessons into activities.
Click on circle to the right to maxise pictures.
“Gaynor displayed a high level of competence in the curriculum area. She ensured that she prepared herself for delivery of the content and has been successful in her endeavours” Julie Yelland Ringwood Secondary College Psychology Supervising Teacher.
“Gaynor’s knowledge of content is excellent” Rachel Woolford Ringwood Secondary College- Dance Supervisng Teacher.
LITERACY AND NUMERACY
I like to explicitly instruct my students to reinforce the importance of literacy and numeracy in my curriculum areas.
TASK CARDS
In order to help my students understand the difference of time, space and energy I use task cards in dance. I also reference the students’ numeracy skills when completing this task to help them understand the numeracy we use in our curriculum.
Constructing an argument
At Forest Hill Secondary College I was able to work with a small group of Year 9
students in an accelerated learning program. I assisted them with their extended
research task for their history class. It was my aim to explicitly teach the students
the literacy skills expected at their level in conjunction with the AusVELs for history
at the same level. Attached is the explicit lesson plan I used when teaching them how to
construct an argument. Also included are my observations and reflections for how effective the lesson was.
ICT
I strived to include many different forms of Information and Computer Technology throughout my curriculum. This included;
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An awareness of a range of contemporary ICT resources suitable for the classroom eg. Edmodo, evernote, google docs.
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Understanding of how ICT resources can be integrated in meaningful ways, that takes into account students existing and diverse technological skills and to produce engaging and challenging curriculum –(blogs, YouTube videos, electronic portfolios)
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Skills in using ICT for communication (including video feedback), presentation (various ways of presenting information through prezi, websites, apps, etc.), work preparation and implementation.
My furture aspriations include allowing dance and performance students to create a interactive blog instead of using journals. This would allow students to upload videos of themselves and photos and really discuss what their process was. I hope to allow students a more interactive way to communicate their progress and allowing them the abilty to reflect on this process in different ways than just journaling.
Of course it is also important as a teacher that I promote the safe and responsible use of ICT in learning and teaching.
As explored in my own process of producing this creative electronic portfolio, I love to extend my own learning to include new and engaging opportunities. This includes opportunities for expressing myself and to allow my students to express themselves and showcase their learning.
