ARTEFACTS
Artefact one - Final Practicum Report
This artefact dates to my first professional experience report on my teaching in a composite class (Year 3/4) at Glenwood Public School, Glenfield in 2016. The transcript showcases my supervisor’s final feedback and marking, clearly representing my professional engagement in the school milieu and reflecting AITSL teaching standard 6.2.1 (graduate).
The evaluative comments by my supervising teacher highlights three key points: reflective of teaching practice, participation in whole school professional development and actively interacting with professional colleagues. Notably, my supervising teacher comments that I have been a reflective practitioner, as I am able to take on-board feedback to consistently improve my teaching practice. I received oral and written feedback daily from my supervising teacher and completed self-evaluations for each teaching lesson. Brandenburg, Glasswell, Jones, Ryan & SpringerLink (2017) emphasises the importance of reflective practice as an endless ‘learning journey’ involving personal and professional qualities and attributes that merge as the teacher assumes ownership of thinking processes and actions and develops a personal philosophy in the outcomes of students. Hence, I aim to model effective learning that is engaging and valued through a continuous cycle of reflective practice.
Moreover, the comments give special mention that I was actively involved in staff meetings. I was an active participant in the planning of school goals for the subsequent year. This gave me the opportunity to collaborate with staff and discuss concerns such as supporting EAL/D students or methods and issues in literacy assessment. According to Jennings (2007), “staff meetings provide a valuable opportunity for systematically building the instructional capacity of teachers…to solve problems and make decisions, as critical decisions require input from the entire school community” (p. 6). Because of this, there were group rotations in the meeting where teachers were encouraged to give input in the form of strategies or suggestions to change or improve areas such as discussed above. I insisted by suggesting strategies in all areas that required input from teachers for e.g. presenting MultiLit as a new literacy program to address the needs of students with reading difficulties. School executives was also involved which allowed me to gain insight of effective leadership.
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STANDARD 6: Engage in professional learning.
6.2.1 : Understand the relevant and appropriate sources of professional learning for teachers.
Artefact two - MATIFIC
My teaching timetable consisted of Computer Education where each student had access to a computer. In this point of time, the computer labs were used to support student learning in Mathematics. Teaching a composite class was a challenge as differentiated teaching was the forefront of learning for students. Gateway (cited in Khan, Bhatti & Khan, 2011) strongly emphasises that ICT has also enabled learning through multiple intelligence as ICT has introduced learning through simulation games or animations which relate and appeal to students’ senses. Mathseeds initiated to be the learning program for students at the time, however, a preposition was proposed. My teacher advised me to stick with the program or find a new way for using ICT to expand curriculum learning opportunities for students. Therefore, I contacted one of the admins of Matific that I had a professional relationship with and was granted full-access of the interactive website for the remainder of my practicum.
As a result, I created individual accounts for each student and linked tiered activities to each students’ competence. In this time, I could monitor and scaffold students’ learning progress as there was individual accountability. After each session, I would view the attainment of each student and allocate new tasks that would support or extend their mathematical ability. The most promising use of this interactive website was that it was easy to navigate and students seemed to be focused and enthusiastic in the activities presented. There were also opportunities for peer-learning as one asked the other for support in a problem or question. Oral feedback was given by supervising field teacher after a few lessons as she commented that I had showed initiative to find new digital resources to enrich learning of students. Notably, she commented that she would bring the idea of using Matific to the school board for Computer Education. In general, this a prime example of my attainment of AITSL standard 2.6.1.
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STANDARD 2: Know the content and how to teach it.
2.6.1 : Implement teaching strategies for using ICT to expand curriculum learning opportunities for students.