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3. Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning

When planning for teaching and learning sequences, I begin by gaining knowledge about what students already know. This allows me to gain the foundations that I wish to build upon in regards to unit planning, and therefore lesson planning by which hold certain learning objectives ranging from knowledge content to specific skills used within the key learning area. Within all my unit and lesson planning, I have engaged with and are confident in using  AusVELS and POLT (Principles of Teaching and Learning).
 
Within the Inquiry Based Learning Programme at Commercial Road primary, the inquiry end product  centred around students gathering information from research in order to use to present their work. Instead of beginning with children going ahead and getting into their research groups straight away, my colleagues and I decided that it would be beneficial for students to revise and practice skills used when gathering information and putting in into their own words for comprehension.  This required each of us pre-service teachers to conduct a group workshop on the following skills: Summarising, Referencing, Information in books and Internet searches. The students rotated around these workshops within our learning space, doing activities related to each skill that they would be expected to use. This process prepared and hooked in students for the integrated learning that was going to be taken place, and got them thinking about ideas and resources they could possibly use.
After the students were allocated to their research groups according to their interest within the topic of Indigenous Heritage due to their conference with myself or another teacher, myself and my other colleagues each took a group of 9 students that we would be planning for and assisting them in their research inquiry. I made observations of my students using an observation sheet in order to plan for our next session together. These group focus lessons surrounded using focus words to put into search engines and cumulating these as a group, photocopies of articles out of the paper or books and focus words
This cumulative group approach to learning, especially as all of the children had similar interests within the topic, allowed for the building of similar knowledge that we could all use as resources within the inquiry projects. By engaging in Inquiry Based learning, all the students had the opportunity to scaffold each other’s learning as the groups were not based on ability but interest. Therefore students not only became independent thinkers and learners, but also interdependent by sharing research and ideas, assisting others with technology and having the teacher present as facilitator rather than dictator.
To facilitate the interdependent atmosphere, I created a our very own ‘Dream Time Board’ that was a regular cork board that the students could place important facts they thought were useful to the group, such as references and resources they found outside of the school environment. 
This teaching resource was a strategy that enabled the group to feel as though they were all supporting each other’s learning surrounding the Dream Time topic. I always maintained a group focus at the beginning of a session, allowing the students to review whether they contained the information needed for them to completed their conference questions.
Through the Dream Time board and the group focus, the learning environment remained a constructive and supportive in nature with the students making the adaption to Inquiry Based learning effectively. After every Inquiry session, I encouraged and engaged with reflection time at the end to talk about learning achieved on this day, and what was our next goal that we strived to achieve next session. This also encouraged intrinsic motivation, confidence, self-esteem and a willingness to try new strategies within their own learning
These group lessons were conducted three times a week, each session ranging from 60 minutes to 120 minutes. Time allocated for the completion of the unit of work was four weeks, the first week for conducting skills workshops and the other three for completing the inquiry questions and product. These final products ranged from building Indigenous weapons, posters, power points, diaramas, model huts and environment. It was an open learning space therefore the children had access to IPad’s, Laptops, Books and the outdoor area. Students needed develop listening, communication and time management skills as they all needed to learn to share equipment with surrounding inquiry groups.

 

This amazing experience with Inquiry Based teaching and learning has prepared me for many situations within the classroom and also experience teaching outside the classroom also. Within this unit, I learnt the value of having mixed ability groups and what students can achieve when they are interested in what they are learning about. This was truly a challenging sequence that gave me insight into what 'organised chaos' within teaching and learning looks like, therefore I now believe I am prepared for anything. This experience has also effected the ways in which I approach teaching a unit of work in regards to tuning children to the topic, deciding how many ways it can be assessed (for, as and of) and the use of resources. 
Mentor Teacher Comments (fourth year practicum)

In order to plan and implement effective teaching and learning, I take into consideration the scope of the curriculum, inquiry units and religious education units. Where possible, I try to make many links between all of these subjects in order to make learning relevant, flowing and placed into a context that the children can apply to their own personal worlds. 

Making Links between units of work/learning: Literacy, Religious education, Science, Maths, Learning and playing together.

 

When developing units of work, in conjunction with the AusVELS, I try very purposefully to make links with different subjects and student outcomes of work, not only to cover as much ground within the curriculum, but to enable students to link their prior knowledge with new learning. This is where true learning within a context shines within a student body. This can be easier depending on a schools topics for different units, however making links where possible is always better than keeping learning stagnant into separate entities.

 

Term 1, 2015 topics to be explored were:

  • Learning and Playing Together (introduction inquiry) and Our Local Place.

  • I am special and so are you (Religious Education Unit).

  • Retells and Recounts (Literacy).

  • Number and Measurement (Numeracy).

 

When looking at all of these planners, learning and playing together was a topic that could be easily integrated into everyday classroom activity, including mathematics games, gathering data with a partner for our graph, paired group reading and group work in literacy. It was an effective way to build the expectations for our classroom community.

However, in our Religious education unit there were many links made with literacy and numeracy. Children began in Literacy as ‘authors’ writing their own texts ‘All about me’ which required them to write for a particular audience and purpose. This followed on from our work of investigating why people read and write, establishing these reasons in order to gather an understanding to assist us in our own reading and writing. 

When myself and the children were deciding what we could include in our own texts titled ‘All about me’ or whatever title the children wanted to choose, the students suggested something about our own classmates being in the text. Therefore I guided discussion into finding out our eye colour or favourite season of the year. It was through this that we then gathered data from our classmates and made an eye colour graph within mathematics. This was then added to our texts within Literacy. 

 

Through these learning sequences that were all linked together, children developed problem solving skills along with the use of many thinking tools such as a Y chart and a Venn Diagram. 

For the second half of the term, linking our inquiry unit ‘Our Local Place’ that involved understanding terms natural, man-made and local moulded well into recount writing. This was due to the shared experiences that I gave to my grade 1/2’s such as planting our own grass seeds that we then observed, explored around the perimeters of our school, and went on a neighbourhood walk. All of these experiences gave the children fuel for writing a well- structured recount whilst making scientific hypothesis and observations about their grass seeds. 

 

‘Belonging’ and ‘Window’ texts from Jeannie Baker were books that anchored children’s thoughts and related what we were learning about our local place to the children’s prior knowledge and experiences.

 

Later on in the term, students were able to compare their grassheads in numerous ways, however using measurement to compare our grassheads then place this information onto a bar graph was yet another way that their learning of science was linked to mathematical tools and experience.

 

Throughout all of these experiences, parents and carers were given information about the purposes behind all our excursions and experiences and were invited to take part in them, in and outside of the classroom. Informing parents and making learning goals visible to them creates the foundations for family, school and community partnerships. I created a ‘What’s’ On’ wall outside my classroom with photos, special dates for them to participate in and childrens learning and learning goals for the week. This was a simple but effective form of communication as students could bring parents to it and explain learning goals, inviting parents in to come and look at more work that they had produced. This was also an initial step for parents who were too busy to enter the classroom but could still take a quick glance at it. 

Success Criterias: guiding student learning.

After creating a confident, focused, empowered and passionate classroom of learners who are willing to take risks with their learning, I then began to create ‘Success Criterias’ for certain tasks in order to make achievable learning challenges that students could tick off in order to understand when they have completed learning successfully. Not only was this a tool for myself to make sure that tasks were being done to a high standard, but allowing student to independently monitor their own success and progress during a learning task. Making criteria’s for certain tasks was differentiated as all students could access the criteria at their own level. They are broad so that students can also extend themselves where possible also.

 

 

An example of this was when learning how to develop a well -structured recount of a shared experience. For two weeks students were guided and explicitly taught this structure through guided writing as a whole class, guided writing groups for differentiation and through drama of each of the parts of a recount.

After the students had established the basic structure, we made a Success Criteria for a recount. This was made big and visual, made with the children so that they understood and revised over its structure. 

After the students had written each part of it, they would come up and place their name or initials next to the part that they had successfully completed. It was through this that students needed to come back and review the criteria and monitor their time management of each part of the recount. This was also a motivational tool as the task was being monitored by the learner, creating a sense of responsibility.

 

This tool also allowed us as a group to (including myself) to sharpen what I wanted from the students. For example, for children who would sit and draw pictures after each section, in the criteria we put that pictures were to be drawn last so that students didn’t take up to much time from their writing. 

Success criteria’s could be used for many tasks, and are a great way to emphasise the learning goal to the students and why they are learning something and most importantly, how they will know they have been successful or not. The Success Criteria covered all of these and in turn fostered and developed independent thinkers and learners.

 

Along with observation charts, curriculum planner checklists (to monitor what you are teaching for accountability), reading strategy charts when doing running records, Success Criteria’s were another tool for assessment. The benefits were that as a teacher I could use this but the students could assess their own progress also. 

Success criteras was only one form of non-verbal communication that I share with students but also simple strategies such as educational music that signify pack up time, set up tables time and the transition from group rotations work. I used songs such as:

  • months of the year.

  • Days of the week.

  • Doules facts.

  • Locational Language.

 

With senior students, this can form of communication can also be used with different content within songs or a soothing tune for reading or writing.

 

Primarily, I want all of my students to grow as independent thinkers and learners. The ways in which I do this center around making the purpose of learning visible to them and developing and acknowldging 'Good Learning Choices'. 

Good Learning Choices!

For students to be able to know themselves as a learner, they need to be able to identify what they think good learners do. In grade 1/2 with the support of our contemporary learning mentors Jo Osler and Tamina Taylor, our aim was to begin to create an environment that would foster independent thinkers and learners that could make conscious choices about their learning and understand the purpose of all learning experiences that they would encounter. I began this process by asking the students about what Good Learning Choices might be and which ones would we like to be making in our classroom and school. 

The students created this list and to acknowledge them as a big part of our learning environment, they went up on the wall (Osler & ). As soon as students realised and were told that they were making one of these choices, they put a sticker on the poster. This helped to regulate student’s thoughts about their thinking and learning and how to do it best. This resulted in greater student learning outcomes, behaviour, reflection and articulation of learning and collaboration with peers. 

Inquiry Based Learning-3rd year practicum.

These choices include Stay focused on our work, Get back on task, Environment walk, Going on with another task, Kids teaching kids/adults.

Good writing choices!

Making good learning choices within our personal learning led to our junior team focus on improving writing in the same way. This involved students being aware of the choices that we make when writing and being able to set goals for themselves in regards to what they need improvement in within writing. These were implemented by a list that the students created about what ‘good writers’ do. They were explicitly taught and practised by the students during reading and writing sessions. Teachers conferenced with students about what choices they could make and were given feedback from their writing that would assist them in choosing a writing choice for next time. 

Like acknowledging good learning choices, students put a sticker on which writing choice they were making in order to monitor which ones they were using and which ones they needed to improve on.

These good writing choices included: Using full stops and capital letters, using adjectives, using gutsy sentences, stretching out words, chunking words, using a writing tool and re read writing.

Graduate teacher, 2014 to present.

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