Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Establish challenging learning goals
Starting each lesson with a learning intention and success criteria enabled the students to have a clear understanding of what they will learn and how they are going to show that they have learnt it. The learning intention would be read aloud by myself and then repeated twice by the students. This helped the students remember what they will be learning and eased with the literacy demands of reading the intention. The learning intention was then pulled apart and parts that the students found difficult to understand were explained further. This discussion concreted the concept for all students and allowed them to access it at their level. The success criteria was then developed based on the learning intention and modelled for the students. For example, if the success criteria was “I can continue a pattern”, the teacher would model continuing the pattern based on the activities that day. Setting a success criterion not only helped the students navigate the new concept but also assisted me to make formative assessment during those activities.
Plan, structure and sequence learning programs
The patterns unit of work on my final placement was conducted over a week to allow for Pre-test, 3 patterns lessons, Post-test and a summative assessment. Before designing lesson plans for the unit, I gathered data from Pre-testing, the mathematical Rubric and the ACARA content descriptions around Patterns and algebra.
My initial planning started with the ACARA. I first had to see what foundational skills the students needed to have developed. The prep patterns content descriptor states that students should be able to “sort and classify familiar objects and justify” as well as “copy, continue and create patterns with objects and drawings”. I then used the ‘Maths Rubric’ for term one to give a breakdown of what skills the students would have to display in ‘I Can’ Statements. I used this information to plan what skills my lesson plans would need to develop. These skills included continuing a pattern using numbers and objects, identifying the rules in patterns and creating their own pattern with a rule. This was a joint creation by the whole year one team and focussed on the general capability ‘recognising and using patterns and relationships’. Recognising and using pattern relationships to continue a pattern was the main skill tested in the diagnostic assessment. The three criterions from the rubric were then directly taken for the summative assessment. The summative assessment included a 'hands on' activity for continuing patterns with physical manipulatives to provide students with the best opportunity to succeed as well as follow the teaching strategies that I would use during the lessons.
Select and use resources
The resources chosen during the patterns unit were items proven to engage students in previous years. The items were able to be physically manipulated allowing students of varying ability to access the content. The tubs of bears and shapes were examples of physical manipulatives. Activity sheets were then resourced from these items. Another reasonably simple activity was the snake activity where the students used paint to continue the snakes pattern. The students really enjoy art activities so this was implemented to ensure engagement. An ICT resource used at the beginning of the lessons were skip counting videos from YouTube. Scratch garden videos were the most student friendly with visually appealing colours and fun animals on the screen. This resource was used to calm the students prior to the activities and allow them to rehearse skip counting.
Use effective classroom communication
My placement in the special school required a lot of modified communication due to students having hearing impairments or being non-verbal. The students used a range of devices to communicate; PODD books, AUSLAN or broken English but the best device used for communication was body language. My supervising teacher printed a sheet with the '10 classroom management skills' and during my lessons she would tick each skill that I was demonstrating and how often I was using that skill. This displayed interesting data as I could see I relied on 'cuing with parallel acknowledgement' to refocus students back to the task. The students did not react well when being singled out but if they saw their friend was getting a reward or praise for displaying correct behaviour they would often self-correct their behaviour. A key non-verbal communication method I used was 'waiting and scanning'. This proved effective for ensuring the students had increased processing time to limit escalating behaviour and provided them with a longer chance to move to their activity, answer a question or correct negative behaviour. Often 'waiting and scanning' was necessary for providing them time to use their communication device.
Evaluate and improve teaching programs
Formative assessment was taken from student work samples and graded against the success criteria for my pattern lessons. The students in the class were not always successful in their learning and I had to use on-the-spot thinking to attempt another strategy to aide their understanding. An example of this occurred with an 'at standard student' who was using the activity of continuing patterns with shapes and when was asked to identify the rule in the pattern (after I covered up the letters) was unable to tell me the rule that I would give the pattern. As our success criteria was “I know the pattern’s rule”, it was important that I scaffolded her learning further by delivering an explicit explanation of the patterns rule. We went over together how to identify a pattern rule and visually drew letters underneath the shapes using the rule tip above the robots. While it was not intended planning to deliver this mini lesson it proved a useful strategy I enacted to extend her understanding in a timely way and plan further whole class revision of pattern rules. This formative assessment was sufficient for monitoring student progress against success criterions and inform me of any gaps in student understanding that I would need to remedy.
Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments
Support student participation
During my Special Needs placement I had to ensure all students were able to participate in lessons that I created. During a mathematics lesson about addition I sourced a game for the students to play. I introduced the lesson as a game rather than work as one of the students in my group had some challenging behaviour when asked to 'work'. The game was modified so the pegs were wider for physical impairments, the wider grip made it easier to grab and helped gross motor development. I modelled the game to the students by rolling the dice, counting the dots and then moving my peg that many times along the number line. For non-verbal students I had a PODD Book printed out with the numbers so they were able to communicate what number was next on the number line.
Manage classroom activities
While on the Special Needs Practicum, I was given the opportunity to teach the morning sessions. The morning sessions involved setting up for the day, establishing the timetable and transitioning the students to their activities. To give students agency about which activity they would like to participate in during 'senior rotations' they were given a choice board with Velcro image stuck on the board. There were key strategies I used to manage this activity including; repeating instructions, positive cues and transitioning with small groups. As the names were called for the students to choose their activity, I repeated the name in a positive tone for the student with the board to hear and hold the board for the next person. Using positive cues, I was able to encourage students to say their activity and for a student commonly indecisive I counted down from 3 to give them a sense of urgency. At the end of the session I received feedback from my teacher who praised my positivity and management of the session.
Manage challenging behaviour
During the same morning session some students displayed challenging behaviour and were slow to leave for their activity. While i had provided processing time for them to transition, they were now eating into their activity time. To try to manage this behaviour, I asked them "do you want to go to the arts table now?". I had to repeat and reframe this question a couple of times to have the student move to their activity. I asked my teacher on a different way to manage challenging behaviour and she commented that instead of providing choice and asking a question i needed to be more firm and say "ok lets go" or ask them for directions to get to their activity for example "show me where you go". This provided the student an opportunity to correct their behaviour and gives them pleasure by being the 'teacher's helper' which the students enjoy. Upon reflecting on this feedback I was bale to implement the new method and saw improvement with how the students reacted. The students were quicker to get to their activities and I was able to manage various challenging behaviours. This improvement was reflected in my final report comments by the teacher who remarked "Amy's confidence grew over her professional practice which enabled her to provide behavioural and learning support to all students in the class".
Maintain student safety
Student wellbeing and safety is a high priority in the school setting. On Placement within the Special Needs school, there was a student diagnosed with autism who was 'high risk' she was known to occasionally swipe at other people when agitated. Due to this behaviour she was placed on her own at the side of the room. She had her own Lego activity close in reach so she could fidget when agitated. Another strategy I used to monitor her behaviour was to place a teacher aide out of reach but blocking her path to the other students. While I was teaching she had a disagreement with another student and went to swipe at the student. She was immediately sent out of the room into a section outside where she then had her desk placed for the rest of the day. If she could display nice calm behaviour while out there then she was allowed to join the class again the following day. Other strategies to ensure other students' safety was to close the sliding door in the double space and have the students do another activity in the other room if she was displaying high behaviour. Students displaying negative or dangerous behaviour were also given the option to go to the 'cool down room' within the classroom and lay down on the pillows and play with the sensory toys to self-regulate their emotions. This helps to keep all students calm and safe during heightened emotions.
Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
Assess student learning
To begin the patterns unit in the year one practicum, I had to assess where the students were achieving and what they already knew about patterns. To do this a simple diagnostic PowerPoint was created with three patterns; number, shape and object. The students had to identify the next four items in the pattern and write these down on a whiteboard or continue them with counters for the colour pattern. The formative assessment was taken informally during classroom observations of activities and formally through a post test that followed the same style as the Diagnostic testing so that direct correlations could be made. A new three patterns were chosen and the students had to identify the pattern and continue. After the post test and data was collected, I analysed the data and was confident that the students were ready for the summative assessment. The results were taken based on traffic lights - green all answers correct and ready to go, yellow one or two answers correct and might need to slow down a little bit, red all answers wrong and will need to stop and provide extra help.
Provide feedback to students on their learning
Feedback is important during diagnostic, formative and summative assessment. Timely feedback gives students a sense of direction of their areas of strength and where they can further develop. Feedback was provided at all stages of the patterns unit. The class was given oral feedback after the diagnostic testing to allow students a sense of their starting point. Students were given individualised oral feedback during formative tasks (classroom activities) about something they did well, what they can improve and how they can improve. This model was then followed in the summative assessment but written down to be provided to both parents and students. They were given two areas of strength and one area of growth. This feedback model helps guide the students to higher academic achievement and allows them to self-regulate their own learning.
Make consistent and comparable judgements
During moderation of the mathematical patterns unit, there were areas where I was unsure of the students grade. I found the scoring rubric to be simple to read and understand. The rubric was very explicit in which skills the students needed to demonstrate to receive that grade which made marking quite easy.
The application of sourcing evidence to receive grades proved informing for me as a teacher. During moderation of one student's work, I estimated they would receive a B grade for their work, however, the teacher stated that the rubric specifies that they have to ‘continue patterns using numbers and objects’ and as they had some wrong answers in both aspects they would receive a D in this section. As they were able to create and identify the rules in her pattern (A standard) this overall lowered her to a C evening out the grade.
Reflecting on this, it proved how important it was to moderate and have consistent and fair criteria when making judgements for students grades.
Report on student achievement
After the students had taken the pattern summative assessment, the supervising teacher and I marked and moderated the work. We looked at their assessment and identified if they had been able to continue both the number and object pattern (C standard), identify the rule (B standard) and then created their own pattern and identified the rule (A standard). Based on these demonstrated skills the appropriate section was highlighted on the term one marking rubric. Accurate records are kept through pictures of the assessment items and reliability is ensured through moderation of these pictures.
