PD & SFD

Last Friday I engaged in a full day PD with my mentor. We participated i a PD on Scratch. It was done in school with 6 other teachers. We were taught specific coding of scratch that we were going to be teaching our yr 8 class for their assessment piece they were about to undertake. I found the PD really interesting and we all had a good laugh and a bit of fun in it. Knowing a little bit about the game I interacted with some of the other teachers to help them when they were unsure of what to do. There are a hep of tutorials I can use to refresh and to continue to update what i know on scratch, here is an example.

Monday was a student free day, I attended school and spent the day doing my planning along with my mentor. It was a very quiet day but i think we achieved a lot in terms of planning. I got all of my lessons created and designed and was able to have good conversations with my mentor about my professional experience and returning next year for my final 2 placements. Hopefully this is something that the prac office will let me do as I feel I will benefit from completing a whole term at the school rather than just bits here and there.

Prac reflections so far…

Im taking my mentors full load of classes which consists of 2 yr 7 design classes, 1 yr 8 design class, yr9 roll and access class, yr11ICT&ITS class, yr12ICT&ITS class and yr12 Media. Its not too bad, the seniors are all on assessment so its just a lot of mini lessons and assisting with them. The 9s is for roll call and also for an access class which is a class run twice a week where the students learn about non curriculum things like class rules, respect, work readiness etc. The 7s and 8s I do all the lessons for and yr 8 have today begun assessment. The yr 7 classes are the most challenging but Im up for the challenge, Im finding it really good and I feel like its giving me loads of opportunity to develop my behaviour management and that teacher voice i hear so much about! I had my yr8s compete in a game of kahoot last week which they absolutely loved, the feedback they gave was awesome, followed by a game challenge on Scratch. Hopefully my next week and a bit will be as good as the first half!

Half way there!

Im officially over the half way mark! I have really enjoyed prac so far and I think that with each time I go out on prac I am learning so much more and becoming much more confident in what i am doing. Im still working on behaviour management but as im told its something that I will develop and find what works with what groups. Ive got a few links for strategies, one is here and the other here. Ill keep searching for resources and building on my stash as they are things ill be able to come back and reflect on when things settle down….

I still think prac would be so much easier if it was all done in one long run. I seems like we just get to know our students names and its over!

Prac week 1 – day 4

So I finally got allocated a placement last Friday and began this Monday. I am teaching ICT, ITS, Digital Studies and Media Studies. I pretty much jumped straight into teaching as soon as I could. I was shown where the classes were up to and given free reign to jump in and take over. So far its all going really well! Today I had year 8s and I made and completed a Kahoot! game for them and then gave them a challenge to create a scratch game from an image. The students had a blast and even my mentor had a go at the quiz and commented on how much fun it was! Success! Of course with the good there’s always some bad, I had a few minor behavioural issues that I tried to keep on top of, but as we discussed my techniques will build over time and I will become more confident and comfortable with behaviour management the longer Im teaching. I had year 9s for access and they had to do subject selections which was good helping students understand what subjects were and working out how to complete the online forms. I felt I had an opportunity to further build a rapport with a lot of the students as i spent time with each discussing their options.

Ive been keeping up to date with everyones posts and its great to see others like Jackie and Emma and also really enjoying their prac.

Im off on a PD day with my mentor tomorrow, were doing a computer game design course which should be interesting and hopefully good for my CV! And then in again on Monday for a planning day while the students have a pupil free day. Hopefully tomorrow will end on a good note, which will finish my week 1 on a great end!

Element 1 – Revisiting Your Professional Identity

Revisiting my personal identity post from element 1, I feel I have grown throughout the progress of this course on my understanding, views, attitude and commitment to teaching IT. I have undergone a range of tasks that have helped me to grow and develop my own pedagogy.

I learnt about misconceptions that were held by students, teachers and the community on IT as a subject and how to identify and address these misconceptions. I developed this diagnostic tool as a pre-assessment type tool for students to complete before undertaking IT subjects so that I could identify misconceptions and assist in providing more understanding to redirect thinking, ideas and opinions.

I joined a few different teaching collaboration groups and IT resource pages. I have been reading and learning a lot from these sites. Many of the groups really show that teaching is very much a collaborative journey, you can learn so much from each other by sharing and asking for help.

I undertook a task I had no idea how to complete TPACK, so I researched all that I could and got the task done, and I feel I did quite well in it considering I had no idea. I learnt from this that anything is achievable if we try.

I learnt a new way to develop a unit overview. Its always a great day when you learn another way to do something!

I marked and provided feedback on an assessment task, this was really interesting for me. Ive marked assessment when on prac, ive even created assessment pieces on prac. I enjoy marking and providing feedback, I feel it’s a good way to see how students have grasped what they have learned and its helpful for looking at areas I may need to change to help students in deeper learning, look at what has worked and what hasn’t.

Differentiation is a massive area and something Ive encountered a lot throughout my degree. Discussing differentiation and the strategies I can implement to assist those students in learning was my last post and this area helped me think about if we had to teach every student individually, how hard it would be. It also allowed me to look into how I could assist students in learning that required differentiation.

Overall I will take a lot away from this subject and the learnings I have encountered over the semester. All the tools and experiences along with the pages, groups and sites I have joined will assist me for a long time in developing my personal pedagogy and in maintaining relevant network connections.

Element 4 – Differentiation

Teachers today are faced with classrooms full of diversity. Each learner has their own unique learning style and ability. Teachers are challenged to identify the needs of their students, to be able to plan and deliver the curriculum using appropriate strategies for each individual learners needs while maintaining an inclusive classroom environment.

In order to identify students that require differentiation the teacher can review students naplan results along with previous report cards and any other student information maintained within their files to check for learning difficulties or any medical conditions such as ADHD, hearing problems, intellectual or physical impairments, etc. Another way teachers can identify where differentiation is required is to use a diagnostic tool such as a pre assessment to test what the students already know and to identify any students who will require further help or assistance throughout the unit.

In order to truly differentiate every lesson, we would be required to individually develop lesson plans for every student within the class and deliver each student with their own personal lesson all within the given space of the lesson. The difficulties this would encounter would be huge as how could one teacher possibly deliver a lesson in 25 different ways to 25 different students within the space of 40 minutes? And to do this in every lesson, every day, every week would just be impossible. The amount of work and preparation that would go into developing unique lessons for every single student for every single lesson would be too time consuming and virtually impossible to do. Also trying to teach 25 students, 25 different ways in 40 minutes would be impossible, spending 2.6minutes per student in this example to teach the required course content just couldn’t be done.

Examples of strategies for differentiation;

Many students with learning difficulties can benefit from the use of a graphic organiser. Graphic Organisers provide a framework for students by creating a visual representation of the significant information they have been taught (Singleton & Filce, 2015). The use of a graphic organiser can alleviate stress and anxiety for the student as they have information easy to understand and simply presented in a way they have found best suits themselves (Singleton & Filce, 2015). The graphic organiser also serves as a brain storming tool, to help the student activate prior knowledge and develop critical thinking tools represented in Blooms Taxonomy (Churches, 2008). Graphic organisers allow students to display messages in any way that best suits their learning ability, the information can be presented in diagrams and charts, it can show contrasts and similarities, or make inferences from information attained. Graphic Organisers also present teachers with a way of assessing students learning, by being able to check the organisers to ensure the students are understanding what they are learning (Singleton & Filce, 2015).

Strategies to assist teachers in delivering the curriculum to ESL students include; using diagrams and visual aids, using simple language, making instructions clear and simple, having classroom routines, breaking down tasks, allowing more time to complete tasks, working in small groups with peers, encourage movement between home language and mathematic language, use mathematical concepts with math language in various forms, practical application of tasks and the use of technology assistance (Wang, Many, & Krumenaker, 2008).

Gifted and talented students can be assisted through the implementation of extension activities and more challenging activities for example in the unit overview in element 2 where students complete a design brief or journal, a G&T student could create a website or blog, they could also use a higher tech program where they could write more detailed code to develop more challenging games.

 

References

Churches, A. (2008, April 1). Blooms Taxonomy. Retrieved 10 01, 2016, from Tech Learning: http://teachnology.pbworks.com/f/Bloom%5C’s+Taxonomy+Blooms+Digitally.pdf

Singleton, S., & Filce, H. G. (2015). Graphic Organizers for Secondary Students withLearning Disabilities. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 48(2), 110-117. Retrieved 10 01, 2016, from http://tcx.sagepub.com/content/48/2/110.full.pdf+html

Wang, Y., Many, J., & Krumenaker, L. (2008). Understanding the experiences and needs of mainstream teachers of ESL students: Reflections from a secondary social studies teacher. TESL Canada, 25(2), 66-84. Retrieved 10 01, 2016, from http://lq6tx6lb4h.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Understanding+the+experiences+and+needs+o

 

Element 3 – Marking & Feedback

Below is the sample student work which I have annotated and provided feedback on.

3_eds4406-sample-of-student-work

Element 2 – Unit Outline

My unit overview is based on a year 11 ITS class on the unit of game design. My unit overview can be found by clicking the link below.

2_eds4406_dubois_unitoverview_element2

Week 10….Still no placement

This week draws EDC3100 materials to a close. For me personally, I have found the subject interesting and found that it has assisted me in developing my ICT skills and expanding on new tools and learning more on existing tools. I am still getting used to diido and feedly, Ive enjoyed using WordPress and I have made links with some other new tools; Verso, Padlet and The Learning Place. The only downside to the subject is the prac placement, the process needs serious improvement. Assignment 3 has a lot of items that require you to get prepared for prac and to set you up to ensure you fulfil those requirements whilst on prac. I do truly believe USQ need to overhaul this system and placements need to be given by a certain time. I, like Esther,  handed in my prac form in February this year and was told yesterday that if there’s no placement on inplace by 3pm Friday then Ill have to wait until they find me one next term and have a delayed start, which I think sounds the same as what they told Ashleigh when she called. I totally know how frustrated Jackie feels, we sem to be in this same position together every placement!

Im still trying to work out what to do if i have a delayed start, with work, family – 3yr old twins, exams, assessments….its just crazy, i wonder if ill get the 5.00pm call on Friday (like last time) to tell me were i got placed….if i get a place that is!

Week 9….Disappointment and Anticipation

As week 9 heads toward a close I am left feeling once again disappointed with not yet having a placement for prac. I totally understand that the prac office may be busy etc etc but I have to honest and say, this is their job. hey have ample experience in doing this, they know how much delay comes about so wouldnt it be best to get into it asap? I hate the thought of not knowing, especially when i have 3yr old twin monsters to organise care for. Unfortunately unlike those lucky people who get free of subsidised childcare, my childcare costs me $1000 per week. So as anyone can imagine the anticipation of knowing my prac is set and the dates are set helps in me ensuring the bookings are set or giving enough time to make changes without charges. But hey who cares right, thats my problem! I also wish the uni would assist everyone equally with scholarship opportunities it seems to me unless your indigenous or in financial hardship theres really nothing there for you. Why do i need to fit into one of these 2 moulds to be worth something to the uni? I read in one of Davids forum posts that it wouldnt be right to withhold everyones prac details for a few that come late, Im sorry but i strongly disagree and I would strongly argue that as teachers we are taught we must be fair and equitable to all students through our subjects, yet we constantly feel let down or that the system is not being equitable and told to suck it up. I, like many other  students without prac placement feel students with placement have an unfair advantage in assignment 3 and preparation for prac. This is unfair and inequitable.

Anyway enough rambling, Im just really disheartened in USQ this week and feel really let down.

I agree 100% with Jackie and that our prac should be like a traineeship, we should have some kind of a wage (or free childcare) and I also think it would work better to have all the prac together in the final year.