Sandra Cultrera
Primary School Teacher
6. Engage in Professional learning
During my professional placement at Sacred Heart Primary I interacted and sought guidance and useful, constructive advice, not only from my mentor teacher, but my principal and fellow staff members. I value the benefits of working in a team of highly communicative and supportive teachers and staff, and appreciated gaining knowledge and insight into all the grades in the school and the uniqueness of each them.
I have interacted with specialist teachers and leaders within Literacy and Numeracy, and collected many resources that I have been free to access at any given time throughout the year. I was especially enthusiastic within the Religious Education curriculum and sought guidance from our Religious Education coordinator.
I formed a very open and communicative relationship with my mentor teacher, having regular chats and touching base even during my teaching and learning sessions within the classroom. All of my planning, including lesson and day plans, all had a section for my mentor teacher’s written feedback. My mentor teacher and I always went through feedback together, a process that allowed me to use reflective practice during my reflections, and therefore plan for the next lesson.
By engaging in reflective practice in regards to my lessons, or days of teaching, from my own feelings and observation and teachers feedback, I am readily able to prepare for similar situations within teaching and learning and experiment with new ways to orchestrate my lessons.
I quickly began noticing during my final year of professional practicum, all of my experience is falling together in a memory bank in order to apply my knowledge to all teaching and learning experiences that I encountered. Being reflective and writing constant notes has allowed me to consolidate this knowledge.
​A school is made up of students, teachers, parents and are also influenced by the local community. Working collaboratively with one another, particularly staff members, in making decisions, gaining support from one another and developing ideas surrounding teaching and learning, promotes the health and well-being of each and every staff member ​
I also took the time to observe other classes and teachers with Sacred Heart Primary, including their classroom rules, what they are learning and how they are doing this, and strategies for teaching and learning from other examples apart from my own mentor teacher in grade 5 and 6. This allowed me to interact with junior classes again, analyse classroom management and observe and gain resources and ideas. These included literacy focuses from big books, group rotational activities, reading groups and curriculum coverage, dance and drama.
​Observation of other examples of teaching and learning​
Examples of my Personal Reflections
Seeking professional collaboration
During my first year of teaching, I identified a need within my classroom of diverse learners. This was extending higher achieving students within mathematics. My evidence of this was that they were 6 months ahead in both their MAI (Maths Assessment Interview) data and their previous year report. The students that fell into this category were both grade 1 and 2 students whom I begun doing guided mathematics sessions with, however I felt I needed more professional development within this area.
I sought the assistance of our EMU support teacher and my mentor teacher whom was a maths specialist at her previous school. Both of these colleagues made me aware of recognising and going back to AusVELS progression point standards and looking at the next year level to gain ideas into the student’s future learning and how to build the foundations for this.
They also showed me very simple but effective ways to differentiate mathematics for these higher achieving students, in particular within multiplication and division. This then became my inquiry question for my VIT (Victorian Institute of Teaching) investigation.