Planning for effective teaching and learning is an important aspect of my teaching; I combine content sequencing with frequent formative assessment and a range of effective teaching strategies. I continually reflect on my teaching impact on students’ learning through frequent formative assessment which is a strategy to evaluate teaching supported by Black and William (1998) and Hattie (2012). I strive for quality teaching and implement a variety of teaching strategies in the classroom to find ways to increase the motivation to learn (Killen, 2009).To enhance and motivate learning I believe in establishing challenging learning goals for every student, as advocated by Marzano (2007) and Sarra (2003). I ensure that I plan for higher-order learning through the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy when creating lesson plans (Fetherston, 2007).  

My background in tertiary-level teaching and the related course planning and sequencing has been invaluable experience during my teacher professional experience placements in the last four years. An example of a highly successful unit that I planned and sequenced was for a Year 11 BCT class that I taught in May, 2013. I created the sequence of topics, activities, lesson plans and the summative assessment for the Year 11 BCT Business Environments unit.  My goal was to teach effectively using a variety of teaching strategies, including formative and summative assessment, and ensuring student improvement in higher-order thinking skills.

I developed a sequence of topics for the unit and created related webpages on my Mrs Schneider’s Lessons website to ensure ICT learning integration and to motivate student learning. Every lesson was planned and driven by objectives that linked to the syllabus. The goals of each lesson were aligned to the objectives and the action words related to the Bloom’s taxonomy to ensure a variety of types of learning that was challenging including higher-order thinking skills. I explicitly informed students at the beginning of each lesson about the activities and goals for the lesson through verbal discussion and visual text on the whiteboard.  Evidence to support the thorough planning and sequencing of this unit can be found in the Unit Plan’s sequence of topics document, my website, a photo of an example whiteboard text and the first page of example lesson01, lesson02 and lesson03.  This evidence directly supports the AITSL focus areas 3.1 and 3.2 and my selection of implementing a website supports focus area 3.4.

I choose a variety of teaching strategies to increase learning potential by avoiding student boredom. In the unit I included direct instruction, class discussion, group work, problem solving, student research, website collaborative inquiry, student writing, mind maps, current news and I implemented an Internet Jigsaw strategy when covering large amounts of information. Examples of my range of implemented teaching strategies can be found through the use of my website and on the second page of lesson01, lesson02 and lesson03. This evidence supports the focus area 3.3.

Another important part of quality teaching is providing frequent formative assessment and well-developed summative assessment that is firmly linked in the syllabus requirements. I gained valuable information about individual learning styles and student progress through discussion, student surveys and student comments on the website. I also created weekly Homework activities that helped me evaluate student learning progress. The Research Activity is an example of a formative Homework assessment activity that helped me track student learning and improve my teaching by identifying areas that students did not understand. This example was part of a scaffolded attempt to help students prepare for the summative assessment. These artefacts relate to the focus area 3.6.

This unit was highly successful due to my planning, integrated website, frequent formative assessment and my use of a variety of teaching strategies. Evidence to support this claim can be found in the Standard 3 section of the Professional Experience Report that my mentor completed for me. Further evidence of student participation can be found on some of the webpages where students wrote information and their views in the Comments section.

I am very confident that I have successfully reached the Graduate Career stage for the AITSL. I plan to further my teaching success by using more teaching strategies and having students track their own progress against set learning goals to increase their awareness of their own learning progress, as advocated by Marzano (2007).

References

Black, P. & William, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5(1), 7-75.

Fetherston, T. (2007). Becoming an effective teacher. South Melbourne, VIC:Thomson.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: maximising impact on learning. New York, NY: Routledge.

Killen, R. (2009). Effective teaching strategies: lessons from research and practice (5 ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: CENGAGE Learning.

Marzano, R. J. (2007). The art and science of teaching: a comprehensive framework for effective instruction. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Sarra, C. (2003). Young and black and deadly: strategies for improving outcomes for Indigenous students. Australian College of Educators, 2003.