FINAL PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Reflections on my School Experience and my Personal Learning Plan

Pre-Service Teacher

Judy Ireland, Caren Poulter, Janet Larkin

School

St Leonards Primary School, Woodcroft Primary School

Student ID:
2093075
Date
6/5/2015

Please attach a copy of this review to your final report before it is forwarded to your university
liaison/mentor by Monday 8th June 2015.

Please provide self-assessment about working towards the goals of your personal learning plan:
Having finalised my personal learning plan at the half-way point of my placement, I had a relatively
short amount of time to achieve what I consider to be career-long learning objectives. However,
through a combination of guidance from my mentor teachers and regular self-reflection, I was able to
make a considerable amount of progress towards my goals over the course of the final three weeks
of the professional experience block.
One of the comments made by my mentor teachers in my final report is that I demonstrated a
thorough understanding of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and how they applied
to my teaching. Given that this was identified by me as an area that needs improvement in my
interim self-assessment, I am proud of the progress I made in the latter half of my placement. This
did not come naturally for me. I made a conscious effort during those final 3 weeks to not only involve
myself in professional learning and development, but to actually seek it out. The AITSL Standards
were only vaguely familiar to me at the beginning of my placement, which I felt was hindering my
development in that I did not know what was expected of me at graduate level and what I needed to
focus on to improve my teaching. Through independent reading and exploration, as well as
discussions with my mentor teachers (for example, seeking specific feedback after lessons relating to
the Standards, rather than just accepting general notes) I was able to develop a robust knowledge of
the Standards and how they relate to me as a teacher.
However, my focus on professional learning did not end with the AITSL Standards. One of the things
that stood out to me during my placement was the ongoing commitment to professional development
(both formal and informal) that all three of my mentor teachers displayed, despite having worked in
the education field for many years. They each took it upon themselves to engage in professional
learning whenever they could (even after meeting their requirements for the year!). This motivated
me to take it upon myself to make the most out of the professional learning opportunities offered to
me by my placement schools for example, by attending professional development around
Restorative Justice outside of my designated placement hours, and working with other staff around
the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data of School Students with Disability. I was also able to
interact with outside professionals, such as speech pathologists, to further increase my
understanding of working with students with speech and language disabilities.
This commitment to professional learning has stuck with me, even after completing my placement,
and I hope to continue seeking opportunities for learning whenever I can so that I never stop
developing as an educator. I have started looking up various courses and conferences that look
interesting and thought provoking to me, and have also signed up for a number of professional
development sessions through the school that I work at as an SSO. I have also recently been
discussing with one of my school cooridnators the possibility of returning to the school to shadow one
of the assistant principals so that I can observe and develop an understanding about the process of
applying for funding for students with special needs, etc.
The next learning goal that I focused on was providing timely, effective and appropriate feedback to
my students. This was something that I felt that I struggled with in the early stages of my placement,
as I was focusing so much on behaviour management and ensuring that my lessons went smoothly
that I was not able to spend time ensuring that the content had been understood be all students. As I
became more confident in the classroom, it became easier for me to focus on assessment as I was
less nervous about things that could potentially go wrong. However, I still set clear goals for myself so
that I would not let assessment fall under my radar, so to speak. The most useful thing that I did was
establish a routine of daily conferences with students. Using a class list, I was able to select four or

so students every day to sit with individually during our daily writers workshop sessions. I used this
time to write notes about their progress and discuss their writing with them. This gave me a clearer
understanding about where each student was currently at, and how I could better support them to
become more confident writers. While this was the most significant use of feedback throughout my
placement, I also used a number of other strategies to ensure that all students were receiving
constructive comments on their work. This included post-it notes, check lists (to monitor who I had
spent time with each day), and sharing time at the end of the lesson so that students could give
each other feedback on their work.
The next learning goal I set for myself was to differentiate my teaching in order to meet the needs of
all students. This was possibly the biggest and most challenging task I set for myself. Differentiation
is a multifaceted approach to teaching, and as educators, we can differentiate our lessons in multiple
ways. For example, by interest (inspiring curiosity or passion) or by learning profile (encouraging
students to work in a preferred manner). These forms of differentiated instruction came easily to me,
as they were both things that I had been embedding in my teaching from early on in my placements.
For example, I often gave students a choice of how they would like to present their work (using
writing, drawing, making/constructing, playdough, oral presentation, etc.). However, catering for
student difference in readiness (their skills/understanding of a topic) was far more challenging for
me. During my placement, I set the goal for myself to differentiate my Literacy, Numeracy and History
lessons by readiness, before eventually moving on to other learning areas. To do this, I first
conducted preassessments at the start of each unit so that I could accurately determine the prior
knowledge of each student (For example, I created a short worksheet about Time to assess the
students prior knowledge for our Time/Measurement unit in Maths). I then used these results to
group students into three tiers of readiness. By doing this, I was able to provide scaffolds and
supports for the students in the lower tier, and extensions and challenges for the students in the
higher tier, ensuring that all students were engaging with content at an appropriate level of challenge
for them. Students were similarly grouped for their Literacy lessons, based on the results of a
phonological awareness preassessment. We then planned individualised programs for each of the
three Literacy groups so that they were all working within their zones of proximal development. While
I feel that I was very successful at differentiating these learning areas, I unfortunately did not have
time to begin differentiating my lessons by readiness in other subjects (such as Science). However,
with this experience of differentiating, and understanding that it is actually possible, I now feel
motivated to continue working on this learning goal even after I graduate and begin teaching next
year. Eventually I hope to reach a point in my career where all of my lessons are being differentiated
by readiness, as well as by interest and learning profile.
Finally, the last learning goal that I set for myself was to implement and integrate ICTs in a more
dynamic, relevant and meaningful way for my students. This has always been a priority of mine,
however, it is also an area that I know I need to improve in. After setting this goal for myself, I began
exploring the various ICTs available for me to implement in the classroom. In particular, I spent a
significant amount of time familiarising myself with the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB), as it is not
something that I have felt comfortable using in the past (due to malfunctions that interfered with my
very first lesson during my last placement!). I found an abundance of resources and realised that it
can be used as a tool for teaching in a number of different ways (e.g. playing videos, interactive
activities to involve students, powerpoint presentations, etc.). One of the things I noticed was that
some students who had previously been very difficult to engage were the first ones to tune in when I
was using the IWB to begin a lesson. After a Professional Development day that focused entirely on
technology and ICTs, we also began implementing some new programs using the class iPads, such
as the book maker app. Furthermore, as part of my attempt to progress towards achieving this
learning goal, I planned to create a class video as a form of assessment for our Maths unit about
shapes. Students were going to be able to use technology to record themselves finding and
describing shapes in the real world (i.e. the school campus). Unfortunately, due to the fact that I was
only teaching this class for 3 days a week, combined with a number of outside interferences such as
Sports Day, incursions and assemblies, we ran out of time to start this activity. While this was
disappointing, I believe my commitment to using ICTs and technologies in the classroom is
something that will carry over into my future classrooms, so hopefully I will be able to implement
similar ICT-based assessment tasks later on with other classes.
Overall, I feel that I achieved all of the learning goals I set for myself in my personal learning plan, at
least to a certain extent. However, I recognise that I am only at the beginning of my teaching career,
and plan to continue expanding these skills and working towards these objectives as I develop as an
educator.