How Well Did I Achieve My Goals?

To know my students and how they learn

I felt that I accomplished this incredibly well. I entered the school with an attitude of amazement at all the different ethnicities within the school and wanted the girls to teach me about their culture. The way in which I did this was to involve myself in extra curricular activities, lunchtime duties and occasionally classroom chitchat. I asked about their social lives, what they liked to do on weekends, families and even asked a Samoan friend to help me with the pronunciation of names (as I had a lot of pacific island students in my class). It was amazing how well they responded to my enthusiasm about their culture. I then attempted to incorporate this into my classes as best I could. The pacific island students in my year 9 History class researched about the kanakas in Queensland and the white Australia policy as something that directly impacted upon their background. I asked the students with Asian ethnicity to research Quong Tart and the treatment of Asian workers in Australia. I found that relating their background to something in history made it more relevant for them and thus more engaging.

To create and maintain a safe and challenging learning environments

I focused on this aspect by planning activities for students who essentially were refusing to do any work. I had two of these students in a year 9 and a year 7 class, and the way to their learning heart – technology. By incorporating a form of technology and a specific role for them, they increasingly felt comfortable to engage in class. Strategies such as doing a mind map of the board, then asking my ‘difficult’ students to take photos of it on her iphone and then reconstruct the mind map for everyone in the class, or asking the year 9 student to be in charge of collection of a slideshow task.

I also ensured in all classes involved humour and I was always happy to laugh at myself and my mistakes, wanting to ensure students were comfortable and felt secure enough to answer questions or give ideas (even if they were wrong). Another tip I was given to further this by my colleague teacher was to not move on from a student with an incorrect answer but to give prompts and clues to help them get to the correct answer. This was a very helpful tip!

The next goal I have set, moving on from this one, is to create a balance in my classes where both high achievers, average students, behaviorally different students and those with learning difficulties all have their needs met.

To plan, assess and report for effective learning

This internship had a very big ICT focus for myself. I wanted to really involve different technologies in my classes and learn how to implement them effectively. Computer lessons, webquests, slideshows, documentaries, video clips, filming, interactive games, active boards, iphones, laptops, are all the various technologies I used in different ways to engage students. I also have began using the ideas of the schools 21^st Century Learning Committee, which is a group of teachers who find and implement and their share a whole range of different ICT ideas. I think that my emphasis on providing ‘appropriate and engaging resources and materials to support student learning’ was met through my enthusiasm and practical implementation of various ICT resources.

The next step of the goal is to refine the way in which these are implemented to ensure effective learning.