My VCE Biology sequence plan held the foundations for effective and realistic lessons and learning opportunities. It is important to incorporate reflective practice into professional development which is supported by many theorists (Rodgers, 2002, Killen, 2012). Professional development as an educational professional entails regular review of ones work, ensuring that improvements are made for future and differentiation is accounted for (Churchill et al., 2015). I will be reviewing my Biology Sequence plan and provide professional development strategies to improve future practice. Feedback was sought from an experienced mentor teacher and two peer pre service teachers. Collaboration in the educational field is essential in ensuring personal growth as a teacher and providing students with quality learning opportunities (Keefe et al., 2004).

 

My lesson sequence had a variety of learning activities, incorporating both group and individual work. Additionally, multiple hands on opportunities were provided, helping to break up the lessons and ultimately aim to maintain student engagement levels. The variety created in the lessons helps to cater for differentiation in the classroom, ensuring that students are able to try multiple activities and find an activity that provides the best learning opportunities for themselves. Additionally, I also offered student choice with a few of the learning activities, again, providing variety and differentiation opportunities. However, feedback was provided that I need to include timing for lessons and ensure that this is considered when conducting a unit plan. Additionally, it is important to ensure that I also allow enough time for explicit teaching opportunities, ensuring that students understand the knowledge before applying it to a learning activity.

 

My lesson plan applied pedagogical strategies such as using a student centred approach and providing explicit learning instructions. Whilst this is characteristic of constructivism, one aspect that requires further improvement is providing further attention to the alignment of the learning intentions, learning activities and assessments. Constructive alignment allows the students to explicitly know what they are supposing to be learning, how to learn it and the standard required (Biggs and Tang, 2010). I used the key knowledge from the VCE study design as my learning intentions for the lessons to ensure that the curriculum was being adhered to. However, further critical thinking should have gone into breaking down the key knowledge and ensuring this aligned seamlessly to the learning outcomes, learning activities and assessments. This would have further implemented constructivism into the plan, leading to increased student understanding by using clearer learning instructions (Biggs and Tang, 2010). Prior knowledge was assessed using a test at the start of the sequence plan, but peer feedback recommended to integrate this more effectively by using a hook to captivate the learners and engage them in the topic. 

 

A gap in my knowledge recognised by mentor feedback was requiring diagnostic tools to assess classroom behaviours such as participation, resilience or organisational skill. Whilst these are important skills to monitor, finding a way to effectively assess these can be difficult. One way this could be implemented in the future is by creating an observation checklist. However, it is likely that student-teacher rapport will be built and these assessments can be based off our own relationships and judgement. 

A pitfall of my lesson plan that ICT safety was not explicitly considered. ICT safety is crucial in the scientific field as it ensures that reputable scientific sources are utilised and students avoid plagiarism by recognise others work (Webb 2005). One way to rectify and improve this is to use my future schools policy on ICT safety which can be explicitly told to the students and implemented in the sequence plan.