Professional Practice 2 Reflection

What was significant? What were three key learning moments which transformed your

thinking about teaching and learning practice? Describe the teaching moment and its

significance to you.

Within my second professional practice, significant learning moments centred around

developing my behavioural management skills, developing my pedagogy, and building

sequential and effective content for classes. Within behavioural management, I had

significant moments regarding the effectiveness of certain strategies in dealing with

disruptive and unproductive behaviour. These strategies dealt with building routine through a

‘PCS’ (purpose, content, skill) beginning each lesson, to develop relevance and purpose for

the students in understanding what we were doing each class. Furthermore, simple

behavioural strategies to pre-emptively extinguish small disruptive behaviour within my Year

8 class, such as not allowing hats, placing bags on the floor and having students raise their

hand to contribute has proved effective in establishing a productive, positive learning

environment within the classroom. Furthermore, a significant moment in transforming my

thinking about teaching and learning has developed in my pedagogy, in terms of delivering

content. Within this, I have learnt to differentiate and provide an array of content delivery to

maintain student interest and engagement. This is evident in using auditory learning with

listening to speeches whilst providing transcripts, visual through the use of PowerPoints,

mapping, and videos with subtitles, and kinaesthetic through hands-on activities in acting out

historical events. These strategies has been significant in developing my pedagogy regarding

knowing students and how they learn, and knowing the content and how to teach it.

Furthermore, a key learning moment has been in building effective and sequential content for

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my students, and enabling them to grasp concepts whilst adhering to relevance and purpose.

For example, in building the US Civil War unit for my classes, content was delivered

chronologically, beginning with background information on the United States, leading to

differences building between the Northern and Southern US, which developed into

understanding causes for the outbreak of the Civil War, and finally to the Civil War and

reconstruction in itself. In doing so chronologically, students were able to grasp the content-

heavy subject with ease, and develop an extensive understanding of the topic. Furthermore,

within these lessons, continuous reference to the previous lesson to show cause and effect and

development proved useful. As such, these three learning moments have transformed my

thinking about teaching and learning as they have provided avenues for significant

development with my pedagogy, behavioural management and content.

What you learnt? How have these three key leaning moments changed the way you think and

practice teaching?

Within these three key learning moments, it has caused a significant development in the way

I think and practice teaching. In particular, it has enabled me to see my teaching career as

something to continuously develop, adapt and facilitate a level of flexibility. These learning

moments could only happen as a result of my initial shortcomings and failures within the

classroom. For example, within my first professional practice, I was placed within a school

with minimal necessity for behavioural management, and as such, hadn’t had the ability to

develop these fundamental skills. As such, in coming to my second placement, there was

room for error and learning in this area, with certain strategies that had proved effective at my

initial school, proving insufficient in a differing learning environment. It is within these

moments that I had the ability to be adaptable to the situation and learn what is effective for

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behavioural management for certain students, compared to others. Within this, I have realised

the necessity for continual development and flexibility within the practice of teaching.

Furthermore, this flexibility and adaptability is necessary to apply to pedagogy and content

delivery. Within this, it is necessary to recognise that in providing an array of ways to deliver

content, students tend to respond better and have higher levels of engagement and interest.

Whilst developing routine in the start of the lesson is beneficial in establishing the classroom

as a learning environment, such as through a ‘Do Now’ activity or writing down a ‘PCS’, I

believe the practice of teaching should be aimed at maintaining student engagement to have

better student response to the content. Furthermore, diversifying content delivery can prove a

beneficial differentiation strategy within the classroom, whereby certain students may

respond and engage with content better if it is delivered in a certain way.

Why did it work/didn’t work? What strategies worked well in your teaching? What strategies

did not work and why. Support this section with reference to pedagogical theory.

Within my second professional practice, I had the chance to test an array of strategies and

develop what not only suits the students in developing a positive learning environment, but

also works well for myself as a teacher. Many strategies that were testing were incredibly

subjective, and dependent on an array of variables within my students, such as maturity,

behaviour, interest and engagement. Within my Year 11 class, they had a relatively high level

of maturity, therefore I was able to utilise strategies such as independent learning through

research tasks and frequent productive discussions in reference to the topic. As such, within

the senior class, I had the ability to allow the room to be more student-led in terms of

learning. However, this independence and student-led learning proved to be more difficult

with my Year 10 and Year 8 class. Within a lesson, I attempted to allow my Year 10s to be

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more independent in researching stories of Australian Prisoners of War, however this lesson

had to be extensively structured and scaffolded in terms of what websites to visit, what to

search and what information was relevant from this search. Within this, students still

frequently went off-task and were distracted, prompting the lesson toward a more teacher-led

focus. Furthermore, collaborative learning as an pedagogical approach within the classroom

could be utilised more within my senior class, however it was less effective for junior classes,

notably due to this susceptibility for my students to be distracted by off topic behaviour or

playground drama. Within behavioural management, a pertinent strategy that worked

throughout all my classes was the use of direct, instructional vocabulary when attempting to

manage disruptive behaviour. For example, rather than simply asking the class to ‘shh…’

when there was off-topic discussion or when I wanted to gain there attention again, it was far

more effective to directly say ‘listening now’, ‘focusing on your work’ or ‘heads up and eyes

on the board’. Within this, there was room to establish that authority when necessary to

continue the lesson toward a positive learning environment.

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