Reflection:  It was important that I considered all of my students individual needs and recognised those students who required extra support.  I was able to reflect on lessons and make adjustments to future lessons to best support each individual learner’s needs.  This student required additional support in all areas of learning. I developed the understanding that this student needed activities that incorporated repetition (Smutny, 2004). I developed a range of resources and activities that incorporated the same skill but could be applied to different activities.    

Reflection: I gained insight across a diverse range of learning abilities which challenged me as a PST as I needed to take into consideration all learners and sometimes this could not be achieved through learning level groups. During maths students were placed into groups where learning was differentiated to cater for that level of learning however one student required individual learning support strategies and differentiated instruction.  Knowing the learning styles of your students is an essential part of differentiated instruction.  (Smutny, 2004) I needed to understand and research different ways that students learned and how this would impact my teaching.  I gained an understanding through research involving discussions with mentors as well as going over content covered in past university subjects.  Conversations with my mentor discussed that learning is enhanced when a learner’s preferred learning style, prior knowledge and interests are accommodated.  This learner had a kinaesthetic learning style meaning they learnt best by touching and doing. (Victoria State Government, 2007).    I knew this particular student had interests in animals and tactile objects so I made sure I used plastic animals and foam numbers as resources. In reflection, this strengthened my ability to cater for all students however the implications associated with differing learning styles is that there are a broad range of learning styles and this requires extensive time, effort, research when planning activities.

 
Reflection: Without being overly intrusive, it is very important to get to know your students’ families and their community.  (Groundwater-Smith, Ewing, & Le Cornu, 2011)I made it a priority to found out as much background information on my students so I could connect with them on a social and intimate level.  This was a priority as I believe it is extremely important to know the background of students which made up my diverse class of learners.  In a discussion with my mentor teacher, I was made aware that a student of mine had a religious background.  Having this background information allowed me to transfer it into the classroom environment and provide an inclusive learning environment for all of my students. 

 

Reflection: through observation and conversation with staff members, certain behaviours from Student A became apparent.  It was later confirmed that Student A suffers from anxiety. Characteristics of diversity reflected in our schools are the access and participation of students with impairments, disabilities or disadvantages influencing their development of communicative competence, social competence, cognitive ability, or literacy and numeracy.  (Hyde) After a number of conversations with my mentor I was able to gain an understating of the condition that Student A suffered from and was then able to continue to model and implement supportive and inclusive programs and strategies being used.  Student A had a number of fidget toys which allowed Student A to manage their behaviour. Allowing this student to regulate the use of their toys also meant that they were able to continue to participate in all classroom learning activities.  

 

Reflection: THRASS is a program I taught daily. THRASS is a phonetics teaching-tool in the teaching of phonetics. (THRASS Institute, 2018)  To successfully teach this program it was essential that I demonstrated this program using accuracy when introducing content and concepts; unpack and use content specific language; have a deep understanding of the program itself and the underpinning pedagogies; and reflect on the link between this strategy and student understanding and learning.  This was also an area where I used a lot of self-reflection and took mentor feedback to enhance my practice in the next lessons as it was an unfamiliar program to me. 

 

Reflection: I believe that using strategies to develop lesson and unit sequences within the wider curriculum context is important.  I also place huge importance on making the learning relevant and real to the student’s lives – authentic learning. Authentic learning is learning designed to connect what students are taught in school to real-world issues, problems, and applications; learning experiences should mirror the complexities and ambiguities of real life.   (Australian Council for Educational Research, 2016) During the 2D/3D unit the lesson sequence was planned so that students were introduced to household objects which were familiar 2D and 3D shapes.  This allowed students to connect their theoretical understanding of 2D and 3D shapes to the world they know around them. It was important this was introduced at the beginning of the lesson sequence as the concepts scaffolded the following lessonsReflecting on this lesson provided me with a feeling of success as the children were able to apply this learning outside the classroom with familiar objects and name them using content specific language and the sequence of lessons along with the organisation and selection of content was important.  

 

Reflection: I developed a Prep/1 writing unit which was ‘Narrative Writing’.  During this unit students looked at both creating their own fairy-tale as well as retelling a fairy-tale.  I had the opportunity to design the activity, assessment criteria and marking rubric for this unit.  This allowed me to contribute to designing, marking and moderating assessment tasks, and use effective record keeping which provided me with data which I was able to moderate using the Victorian Curriculum (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2017).  Since the beginning of my teaching journey, I have found the increasing importance of using the Victorian Curriculum to form the basis of my teaching – especially when it comes to the planning and development of assessment and reporting. 

Reflection: Teaching a literacy program requires explicit teaching and during my professional experience I was required to not only teach THRASS  (THRASS Institute, 2018), but I needed to build on my own foundational understanding of the program. 

 Through observations of THRASS being taught by my mentor teacher, and doing my own personal research and learning I was able to transfer my knowledge and explicitly teach and model grammatical and English language conventions.  

Reflection: I was fortunate to experience a wide range of curriculum areas which included a water safety unit.  In the photo, students are viewing videos that provide them with safety information about water safety.  The content in these videos are also provided in books however; Technology should be for doing good things in better ways.For example, hearing books being read aloud is an important part of primary literacy. (Cassidy, n.d.)

  I believe it is important to use a variety of teaching resources which include ICT.  I used the interactive whiteboard to view videos like the one being shown in the photo, and also to read ‘Big Books’ aloud but also to allow students to interact with words, pictures, sounds on the whiteboard.  

  

 

Reflection: Students writing goals are developed using VCOP strategies. Formation of letters and size of writing, capital letters, full stops, top to bottom and left to right, spelling choices, finger spaces, recording sounds.  I was able to develop these writing goals with students based off pieces of writing which were then assessed and provided me with the data. Goal setting is one of 10 High Impact Teaching Strategies (Victoria State Goverment, 2017) that increases student learning and was a strategy that I found supported learning throughout writing.     Students were aware of their goals and were able to use this wall as a point of visual reference.  The goals I developed were clear and achievable while addressing the individual needs of each learner.  I strongly support the way that the ‘writing goals’ wall was set up as it allowed for differentiation between learning goals.  

 

Reflection: I became more confident in my ability to plan, develop, teach and assess units of work. The Prep/1 class was a completely new level of curriculum of which I had no prior experience in and this was challenging when it came to planning activities.  I am a visual learner so when I am/was planning I need to physically carry out the activity so that it not only makes sense in my mind, but is also practical for my students and age and ability appropriate, while also addressing the curriculum requirements.  I made sure I planned well before the lesson so that I had efficient time to discuss and revise the lesson plans in accordance with my mentor's feedback. (Cavanagh & Prescott, 2015) After discussing and revising my lessons I revisited  parts of the lesson that were either vague or needed more information.  Discussions allowed me to work out all resources I needed. In this lesson sequence I needed multiple resources and when creating the activities I would miss important resources; once revising I was able to make a note and make sure all elements were addressed.  This organisation impacted the lesson heavily as it allowed me to be organised prior to the lesson and have everything ready so that the lesson ran smoothly and I was prepared for the students.

 

Reflection: It important as teachers that we use a range of teaching strategies so that our students are exposed to the best possible learning opportunities. I believe this is achieved through a variety of teaching strategies including; whole group, small group, peer teaching and teacher led stations. Stations are designated areas of the classroom where students can work on different tasks within a unit.  (Smutny, 2004) Using group stations as a teaching strategy allowed me to spend time with every group and every student to explicitly teach an important concept.  This also allowed me to observe and gauge the students’ understanding which helped in my assessment and reporting as I had the opportunity to spend small group and one on one time with each student. I have found how important this is throughout my placements as often some students ‘slip between the cracks’ if they do not receive enough teacher support through small group or one-on-one learning.  I was able to use strategies such as feedback in the moment and questioning to gauge how well students were grasping the concepts. These teaching strategies were important during the learning station activities as students could make the most of the time with a guided teacher group and were then able to transfer this knowledge to following stations. I was also able to scaffold student learning through demonstration.      

Reflection: I believe using a range of diverse resources enhances student learning.  As a PST I acknowledge that I am at the beginning of my career and my ‘resource bank’ is still being built up.  Although I love to create and develop many resources I also use ready-made resources like the template of the cube.  I found a cube template and printed it on A3 paper as it is age appropriate to the motor skill developments of the students as they were required cut out the cube.  The unit of work which the cube belonged to incorporated a range of resources from tactile building, to 2D shape drawing.  In reflecting on all of my teaching experience so far I have found that a range of resources are not only interesting but they enhance learning. (Harrison, 2003)

 

Reflection: Shifting between whole-class activities, to small group activities, to independent learning required effective classroom communication. Effective communicators have a large range of communication skills they can use; they also have the ability to choose which ones are more appropriate in any given situation. (Groundwater-Smith, Ewing, & LeCornu, 2014)I consider myself to be an effective communicator and demonstrated this during our whole-class ‘Big Book’ sessions where I used appropriate volume, pitch, tone, language and body language. The type of text would guide these forms of communication and allowed me to connect with the students and engage them in each book.  As I enjoy reading I believe this reflects on my capacity to read to students and absorb them into each book I read.

 

Reflection: I believe it is extremely important to use feedback and self-reflection as strategy to evaluate teaching and to inform future teaching. Feedback is one of 10 High Impact Teaching Strategies (Victoria State Goverment, 2017)that supported my learning as well as student learning as I was able to implement feedback in future lessons.  I constantly seek feedback from my mentor teachers and other teaching staff and try to implement the feedback into my future planning.  I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to be observed by some senior students during my first full day of control.  I implemented the constructive feedback I received into my next lesson sequence. 

Reflection: Interactions with parents are important. (Groundwater-Smith, Ewing, & LeComu, 2014)I welcomed the opportunity to have parent involvement in the classroom and a range of other school events.  I was fortunate enough to have parent helpers/volunteers come in every Friday morning and facilitate spelling.  It was during these sessions that I was able to build a strong relationship and rapport with my parents.  Before I observed the parents helpers I had preconceived ideas and questions surrounding whether parents would be distracting to the students; however after seeing it put into practice I was able to see that it was an extremely successful activity where all students were engaged in.

 

Reflection: After week 1 I observed that the current seating plan was not working and in discussion with my mentor teacher had the opportunity to change the seating plan.  I wanted the students to choose where they sat based on what they thought would be the right decision and was best for their learning and the learning of others I believe it is important for students to take responsibility for their own learning. Students chose someone they hadn’t sat with before and thought they could work well with.  In reflection, majority of this seating plan worked well however there were a couple of readjustments made and I realised that seating arrangements have an impact on interaction patterns in the classroom. . (Groundwater-Smith, Ewing, & LeCornu, 2014) For my own personal development, it was important that I used this trial and error strategy and my mentor teacher knew what could work in the future. An important feature of this seating plan was the layout of the tables and chairs.  I aimed to have as many students facing the front (or sideways/front) of the classroom so they are as engaged as possible.  

Reflection: I continued to follow the classroom routine so that the students could continue with their normal teaching and learning schedule.  Each afternoon before leaving school I prepared the whiteboard with the following days lesson timetable, along with getting my resources ready so that they were organised for the next day.  The students referred to the timetable a lot which meant they were aware of time management which challenged me as time management was something I focused on improving.  The visible timetable and routine not only helped me in meeting timeframes but it met the emotional, cognitive and social development needs of the students (Hamby, 2009).  

Reflection: One of the most important things I learnt during this placement was that behind the majority of challenging behaviour is a problem that a child is experiencing – they are not just being challenging for no reason.  The ‘Thinkng Chair’ is a reactive behaviour management strategy which was rarely used during my placement.  The ‘Thinking Chair’ was a strategy that my mentor teacher implemented at the beginning of the year which aligned with the schools behaviour management policy and helped me in building a positive teacher-child relationship (Ostrosky & Jung).  It was important that I used consistent behaviour management and consequences.  I really admire my mentor’s approach to behaviour management and the use of the ‘Thinking Chair’, as students knew that when they were on the chair theyhad made a bad choice for their learning and they needed some time to think and reflect as to why they were on the chair.  

 

Reflection: I was exposed to a whole range of new learning programs, activities and assessments.  I was given the opportunity to do as many informal, formal, formative, summative and diagnostic assessments as my mentor teacher encouraged me to build up as much experience as I could.  I also was able to deepen my understanding of the importance of letter/sound Identification and assessments. this informed my teaching as I was able to see how having the ability to match letters and sounds helps children develop an understanding of words and spelling patterns. (MLPP, 2001).   

Reflection: Feedback to students on their learning is an extremely useful tool about the learner’s performance. (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2017)During my teacher group reading I was able to give students oral feedback whilst the reading was taking place.  I used a range of formative and summative feedback to the students which included reading goals such as: get your mouth ready for the first sound, stretch out words, no finger reading, asking questions, and many others. I found this tool of feedback during the learning and teacher group to benefit the children as they were able to immediately implement the feedback they received into their reading. 

Reflection: One of the many assessing opportunities I had was to mark student writing samples and assess them using the Australian Criterion Scale (Andrell Education, 2018)I focused on assessing three different student’s work and attempted to make assessment judgments using the criteria and the level of work from a student working above the national standard level, at the standard and below the standard. Assessment criteria are crucial in establishing a clear understanding about what is expected from assessed work. (Newcastle University, 2017) Using criteria to assess writing as a graduate teacher gave me the opportunity to assess consistently against criteria that also allowed me to communicate clearly to students, mentor teachers and parents.  With guidance and feedback from my mentor I was able to attempt to make the most accurate judgments referring to the rubrics I had. 

Reflection:At the beginning of our 2D and 3D shapes unit, I needed to gauge where my students’ understanding was and I found that the most valuable way of doing this was through a whole class discussion and observation activity. The discussion of feedback from observation lead to valuable reciprocal professional learning conversations. (NSW Department of Education, 2018) It was from this lesson that I gained an insight and understanding into the students’ knowledge around that topic and I was able to plan and inform, with the support of my mentor teacher, the sequence of lessons. 

Reflection: An important aspect of teaching that I experienced during Prep/1 was that I did not always have time to record students data in a detailed manner or at the exact point in time; which is why I developed this reporting strategy.  Using advice from my mentor teacher, I developed a strategy that allowed me to report on student achievement and providing me with the information and data I needed to evaluate students learning. Marking rubrics support assessment as learning; students can see what is important and where to focus their learning efforts. (UNSW Sydney, 2018)I used marking rubrics created based on the content being taught, as well as in accordance with the learning intentions and success criteria for the unit or lesson. These reporting and marking rubrics also acted as a physical report that I was able to reference to when reporting student achievement to parents. During parent teacher interviews in which I participated I was able to observe how my mentor teacher reported on student achievement to parents/carers using physical written notes and reports.  I saw how important it is to have a prompt such as a marking rubric to show parents. This not only helps me keep accurate and reliable records of student achievement but it also helps parents understand how reporting on student achievement can be recorded, and why it is done this way. 

M- Recognise the end goal and the expectation of the standard required to be reached by these students and develop a tracking system that assesses the progress each student is making and match it to the nationally recognised standard.

A – Address the learning intentions and outcomes with each individual student with Individual Learning Plans and any other differentiated learning strategies and frameworks required to support each learner to reaching the national standard.

R – Discuss with students the importance of developing learning goals and reaching them together with myself so they understand the relevance and importance of the content – therefore develop relevant content important to the student.

T – Within each numeracy unit, discuss the timeframe and expected learning outcomes so student progress can be measured. 

Reflection:  My understanding surrounding the learning needs that Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander students present is the foundation on which I have developed my SMART goals.  Addressing the issue of Indigenous students being behind the National minimum standard (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2018)in numeracy, is the driving force behind these goals. Utilising creative 21^stcentury resources to support the planning and learning required to reach these goals based on the notion that all students will be at the national minimum standard by the end of my Professional Experience.  Implementing these goals helps my professional development in a number of areas; allowing me to interpret data, plan for specific learning needs, assess for learning and implement a range of teaching strategies (refer to standard 1.4 for a specific teaching strategy in this area).

Reflection: My time management skills became an area for improvement during my placement.  My lesson sequences often incorporated rotations, small group work, whole-part-whole lessons and many other things that involved timeframes.  This meant that I needed to improve on time management as I found that this was an area of improvement.   My mentor teacher provided me with feedback on what went well in my lesson and what i could have done better; (Cavanagh & Prescott, 2015)

Reflection: Cued articulation is extremely useful for developing skills in articulation, language and literacy in the classroom (Balfe). It was a program that was used during my professional experience and of which I was required to engage with through professional learning to ultimately improve student learning. Cued articulation was a new experience for me and it was something that I needed to continue to improve on throughout my placement.  Using these cues was an extremely useful scaffolding strategy for a number of students as they could recognise the cue but not the letter. It was an area that my mentor teacher encouraged me to do some personal development and I used this book as a resource.  Cued articulation is an area that I need to continue to develop.  I used Jane Passy’sCued Articulation (Passy, 2010) as a support resource which allowed me to improve student learning by being able to use the correct cues throughout lessons.

Reflection: Presentation is an important responsibility that I believe I have as a PST.  I made it a priority to present myself through dressing appropriately and within the school staff uniform requirements; as well as behaving and speaking in a professional manner.  This is an important part of representing no only myself but I was representing the school I was at and when in public it is important to uphold the school reputation as looks can be judged by members of the wider community.  This is something I will continue to remember and do throughout my teaching career. I meet professional ethics and responsibilities through demonstrating a commitment to The Victorian Teaching Profession Code of Conduct (Victorian Institute of Teaching, 2015)

Reflection: I was exposed to a range of policies, including unfamiliar policies and experiences that required an understanding of policies and implementation of these policies.  A familiar policy which has supported me and continues to is the Codes of Conduct and Ethics. (Victoria State Government, 2015)This document provides me with a clear and precise understanding legislative, administrative and organisational requirements that I am to comply with. 

Reflection: I believe it is an extremely important to establish strong relationships with parents/carers, and especially during a short placement as communicating or working with parents and caregivers is an aspect of teaching. (Groundwater-Smith, Ewing, & Le Cornu, 2011)I was able to develop relationships with parents using a communication strategy that allowed me to post photos, videos, return notices and any important information to parents/carers during school time.  I found this a useful tool and my parents engaged and interacted with me throughout my placement. 

Reflection: I engaged with the document to support my planning for extending two of my students during reading groups.  These students were assessed as being at least 18 months ahead of the expected level and within their learning group were ahead of the majority of their peers. I always sook advice from my mentor teacher on strategies to cater for all learning needs and I was provided with this document which was provided to schools to help teacher differentiate and extend learners.

 

Reflection: After viewing a wide range of professional resources based on strategies for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students; I have been able to deepen my understanding of the impact that culture and linguistic backgrounds can have on the education of certain students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds.  In this particular resource ‘Maths as storytelling: Maths is beautiful, (Matthews, 2012)it presents the strategy of using mathematics as storytelling, using symbols and images.  This is a strategy that allows Indigenous students to learn through cultural connections. Examining these resources has strengthened my understanding surrounding the importance of involving cultural connections as a teaching strategy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to learn.