EDN2101 Final Task – Rhiannon Huston

1. In a few sentences, note points about your teaching that you are happy with.

 My ability to adapt.

o My mentor continually noted that my lessons consistently improved and built upon each
other. This made me much more confident moving forward through the placement and
will aid in my future placements as I now feel confident in my skills to listen and reflect
and put that information into practice in a timely manner. I believe this to be my biggest
strength as a pre-service teacher and this will also be incredibly useful throughout my
teaching career in bettering myself as a learner and a teacher.

 My capacity to aid students that needed extra assistance.

o At the start of my placement my mentor gave guidance as to the general capacities of

each class I would be teaching and also identified students that may need extra
attention during lessons. This information was useful, particularly at the beginning of the
placement when I didn’t know the students well. Also, by noticing the signs to look for in
these students, this allowed me to more easily identify other similar students that were
less consistent in needing assistance but sometimes did. This not only helped me gain
confidence in aiding students that struggle in class quite consistently, but also helped
me acknowledge and extend those students that need bigger workloads or more
difficult work to ensure they don’t get bored with the class. I also really enjoyed this
aspect of my placement as I was able to build greater rapport with students and it was
incredibly fulfilling to see them understand things with my guidance that very shortly
before they were struggling with.

 My content knowledge.

o I believe having graduated quite recently (2016) from year 12 and consistently getting A
and B grades for English during my time at school has given me great background
knowledge about the current curriculum and has aided in my ability to teach content
effectively. My mentor believed that my curriculum knowledge was one of my strongest
attributes as a pre-service teacher, and this is obviously one of the most fundamental
aspects of the job as a teacher so this was comforting. Although I recognise I have good
content knowledge I would still like to continue expanding this, particularly in the areas
of HASS and Literature as a sub topic of English. I believe curriculum content knowledge
is one of the most important aspects of teaching and continuously evolves and therefore
should always be being developed.

 Behavioural management and CMS (Classroom management strategies).

o Surprisingly for me, I did much better in this aspect of teaching than I thought I would. I
was able to control the classroom as a reasonable level from the first few lessons and
improved this throughout my time on placement. This most notably included the use of
a cue/call to attention, for this I used a countdown from 5 to 1 and students not silent by
this time would either be asked directly to be quiet or I would begin writing minutes the
class would stay in at lunch. I always allowed the classes to earn this time back if they
behaved well and would hope that after some time this method would no longer need
to be used. I have completed some units throughout my degree so far that have
improved my knowledge of behavioural management and overall CMS. However, similar
 to curriculum content, I believe this aspect of a teachers role can continuously develop
and evolve as new research is made available and new strategies are recommended.

2. Note teaching skills or knowledge that you want to continue to develop. (Your EDN2101 Final
Evaluation Form can guide you with this)

 Behavioural management and CMS.

o Similar to what I have written above, this aspect of my placement went much better
than I expected. However, I believe this aspect of a teachers role needs to continuously
evolve and be honed as a skill and therefore should always be being developed. In
particular I would like to improve my knowledge and try and implement the use of
mindfulness in the classroom more. This could be using silent reading, breathing
exercises, gratefulness activities or responding to particular stimuli such as a piece of
music. This worked very well for one of the other mentor teachers and placement
students during my placement and I have had an interest in mindful teaching since I
began my degree in 2017. I use mindfulness often and am aware of the incredible
benefits it can have personally and also through my own research so I want to continue
developing this in particular into the future.

 Voice projection, modulation and tone.

o My ability to project my voice has definitely improved over my last practical placement
which is positive. However, I now need to work on improving my modulation and tone
throughout the time spent in class to further engage learners as I have a tendency to
become quite monotone by the end of a lesson or the end of a school day. This will likely
improve over my future placements but I will also try and do further research and ask
advice of mentors and family friends that are teachers to improve in this area.

 Curriculum and content knowledge.

o As previously stated, my mentor for this placement and I believe my content knowledge
is at a level where it definitely meets the levels set by the professional teaching
standards document. However, I still want to continue developing this aspect of my
teaching and I have the goal to continuously develop this throughout my career as a
teacher.

 Scaffolding learning more.

o Based on my feedback from Simlab and practical placement, I have the ability to scaffold
learning and understand the importance of scaffolding. However, sometimes jump into
the feedback and informal assessment aspects of learning too quickly without adequate
scaffolding for student knowledge prior. I was able to improve this significantly over my
time on placement but as it is such an important aspect of teaching and clearly
something I can sometimes struggle with I would like to keep it as a priority for myself
going into the future.

3. List 3 concrete strategies that you will do to continue your own learning.

1. I will read more information such as scholarly and peer-reviewed articles about mindfulness within
classrooms and write a short document with references as to why I believe it to be an effective
classroom management strategy to give to future mentor teachers at placements and to update and
put within my ePortfolio before applying for teaching jobs after graduating. I will make the first of
these documents over the upcoming university break between December and February and use a
variety of references available from the Murdoch Library.
2. I will continue the BRITE module (finish R,I,T, and E) and complete it by the end of the university
break that finishes at the end of February. This will continue to identify my current skills and further
develop in areas of building resilience, relationships, wellbeing, taking initiative and emotions.

3. I will read suggestions and discuss strategies with my family friends to improve my voice modulation
whilst teaching. I will also read things aloud twice a week for the entirety of the university break and
will schedule reading aloud every week next year as part of my yearly goals. This should improve my
vocabulary as well and vocal tone and modulation. Additionally I will read some strategies and
information found online to improve my knowledge of voice modulation and put strategies into
practice. I have found a few of these websites online (as linked below) and will be reading these
before my next practical placement (Week 1&2 of Term 2 in the Schooling calendar in WA).

o http://schoolofeducators.com/2011/07/teacher-tips-how-to-use-your-voice-as-an-
effective-teaching-tool/
o https://www.write-out-loud.com/teachers-voice.html