Professional Engagement
6. Engage in professional learning. 6.1 Identify and plan professional learning needs. By undergoing evaluations of my teaching practices and lesson sequences weekly, I was able to identify and plan professional learning needs and understand my strengths I brought to the classroom environment, and areas I need to further develop. This was also discussed throughout my mentor feedback on my lesson deliveries as well. |
6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice.
When on my Professional Experience 3 I was given the opportunity to learn how to use ICT more effectively in the classroom. Before engaging in working with the ICT programs, I did my own research at home to help me understand the concepts and reasoning behind why this is an effective tool to improve my teaching practice. Learning how to use tools like plickers for comprehension and toontastics for making animations in technology really broaden my horizons that education is endless, and that there needs to be an emphasis of technology use within the classroom. Without these technological programs, many lessons I taught would not have been possible! Students are also more engaged in the classroom when using ICT programs. I was also given the opportunity to engage in a professional development day held by the developers of back to front maths. This professional development day focused on mathematics moderation tasks. |
6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice.
With having three different mentors observe my lessons and provide me with feedback really allowed for me to improve my practice. My mentors were always really good with their constructive feedback, and my science mentor provided me with great detailed feedback that really made me reflect on my strengths and weaknesses within the lesson. At the end of my placement I was told that my practice had greatly improved and that I was always willing to engage in colleague feedback to improve my practice. I also attended every PLC and staff meeting and even a training day. I believed every one of these meetings really helped me grasp a better understanding that the role of an educator is not to only teach students, but to teach each other, and to be a continuous learner. |
6.4 Apply professional learning and improve student learning.
As a science NIT teacher, it is known that behaviour management is one of the main focuses when teaching. I wanted to observe how a specific class behaviour was for their pre-service teacher within their classroom dynamic and how it is different to when they come to science. This within itself surprised me, because while the pre-service teacher and I used identical strategies, and used the same Play Is The Way vocabulary, students behaviour was vastly different between the two classrooms. Now that I knew that this was the case, the following lesson, I knew I had to be even more stern, and actually ask the class as a whole, why their behaviour changes when moving across the school yard. Having this discussion actually allowed students to begin to reflect on their alternate behaviour and at the end of the placement block, that class was the class in which I experienced the least amount of behavioural problems with. |