NAPLAN and KLA Learning Programs Use in the Classroom - Assignment Example

Task The school has a focus on teaching English and Mathematics. This is accomplished through engaging lessons that get the involved. The school has a strong focus on NAPLAN and also for students to do well on NAPLAN tests in the future. In order to do this, the school prepares students for the test ahead of time. In addition to NAPLAN, the school uses a program called Language, Learning and Literacy (L3). This program is designed for students in kindergarten, as its primary purpose is to enhance literacy skills in small groups of three students at one time. Moreover, the school is involved with another program that focuses on reading; this program is known as ‘Focus on Reading’. This program is a research-based program in which the school is involved in to enhance the vocabulary, fluency and reading comprehension of students. Also, the learning focus is completed through engaging students with hands-on activities. In addition, the school does hold up the English and literacy skills of students to be their strengths. The school has determined this through NAPLAN results. However, the school does aim for its students to achieve higher results as programs are put into place, and this includes all the programs previously mentioned. The school has adopted a child-centred approach in its teaching methods. This child-centred view can be witnessed in the classroom, where students are actively engaged in class discussions and can explain their thinking. Also, through this child-centred view the learning styles of students are taken into account. This approach also deals with cooperative learning in which children are encouraged to work together. In the classroom students are required to work in groups for some of the classroom activities. The classroom teacher does use the classroom’s philosophy, as the teacher is involved with all of the programs. She uses the ‘Focus on Reading’ program and also prepares students for NAPLAN so that they will understand it the following year. Also, the ‘Focus on Reading’ program requires teachers to complete training every fortnight. The classroom teacher is encouraged to set out the classroom in a way that will engage and guide the students. Hence, the way in which a teacher organises the classroom is important for student learning (Hayes, Mills, Christie & Lingard, 2006). The teacher does make use of some pedagogy in the classroom so that all students can achieve their best. Pedagogically, the teacher shows the four productive pedagogies in her classroom. In the classroom it is clear that intellectual quality is focused on (Hayes, Mills, Christie & Lingard, 2006). More specifically, ‘higher order thinking’ is seen when the class completes an activity and students explain what they have learnt. The students write down and discuss their findings, which results in student to teacher conversations and student to student conversations (Hayes, Mills, Christie & Lingard, 2006). In the classroom, this is seen after activities have been completed and there are discussions designed to exchange ideas and thus results in more learning. The classroom teacher does allow discussion in regards to students’ writing, and this achieves ‘metalanguage’ (Hayes, Mills, Christie & Lingard, 2006). Every morning as a class, spelling words are to be discussed. Also, as a class the students put a word into a sentence. This resulted in the teacher correcting and discussing how sentences work and what vocabulary should be used. In addition, the classroom teacher organised some lessons that could be linked to the experiences of students. Hence, this shows that learning can relate to their everyday lives through the dimension of ‘Connectedness’ from the dimensions of the pedagogical framework (Hayes, Mills, Christie & Lingard, 2006). The classroom teacher creates a ‘supportive classroom environment’. One of the ways in which this is seen is through the teacher creating lessons where the students begin to question, discuss and contribute in class activities by showing ‘academic engagement’ (Hayes, Mills, Christie & Lingard, 2006). Throughout the classroom there are activities for students that are student–centred. This was seen more often in group work, as the children become responsible for how they are going to present their findings, resulting in the element of activities that are student-directed (Hayes, Mills, Christie & Lingard, 2006). The classroom teacher has put behaviour management rules visually on one of the walls. Through this students respect each other; this promotes success among the students. This displays that the element of ‘social support’ is seen (Hayes, Mills, Christie & Lingard, 2006). In addition, the dimension of the productive pedagogies, ‘working with and valuing difference’, is seen through the classroom teacher (Hayes, Mills, Christie & Lingard, 2006). The classroom teacher understands every student’s culture and shows respect and valued for each of them (Munns, Sawyer & Cole, 2013). The teaching in the classroom does stack up against some of the frameworks of good teaching. One of these frameworks is student engagement. Through the teaching, it can be seen that there is student engagement in the classroom, as students are discussing, questioning and showing they are engaged through their enthusiasm and rapid completion of work. According to Munns and Woodward (2006), there are two types of student engagement: procedural and substantive engagement. However, in the classroom, substantive engagement is most evident. The reason is that through the classroom students are strongly engaged in the work, as the teacher organises her activities so as to catch students’ attention. Focusing on the learners, there are numerous KLA’s that can be achieved in the classroom. These involve English, Mathematics, Arts, HSIE and Science. Through my observations and talking with the classroom teacher, it was clear to me that there are different types of learners. There are a couple of students who need extra guidance, as they are below their achievement level for their stage of learning. For one of the students with autism, a support teacher comes into the class to help that child. However, on the other hand there are students who are achieving above their stage 1 level. Therefore, it is clear that there are students of mixed abilities in the classroom. The classroom teacher usually assigns the students into groups according to their abilities. She finds it easier to guide a whole table of students who need assistance all at once. In the classroom there are signs of engagement shown by the students. This is demonstrated by the children participating in activities while they question their work and ask their teacher for help, show their enthusiasm, have discussions with their peers, provide input into class discussions, offer help to other students; show examples of their own work to the class and display signs that they are present in the task and not distracting others. Task 2 Aim: The two learning experiences will be conducted on a Stage 1, Year 2 class. The aim of this investigation is to allow students to begin the COG’s unit of ‘Environments’. The classroom teacher allowed me to begin the unit. Through these learning experiences students will learn about natural/built environments and about living and non-living things together with links to other KLA such as English and Creative Arts. Learning Experience One: This learning experience is linked to English, HSIE and Creative Arts. Through this learning experience, students will learn about natural/built environments and wet/dry environments as well as antonyms. This learning experience taught me how to use the IWB and put pictures of different animals that live in different environments. As a class we had a discussion about the different environments. I used the pictures to test students’ understanding of the environment. I then questioned which environment each picture came from and wrote down their answers on the board. After that I put on two videos; one explained wet environments in greater detail and one explained dry environments in greater detail. Once the videos had been watched, I wrote the word ‘antonym’ on the interactive whiteboard. As a class we had a discussion about what that word meant and the students gave examples relating to the environment. For example, the antonym of wet is dry. Then I gave the students an activity that required them to form groups of two. They were given a list of words relating to the environment and they had to discuss and write down the antonym for that environment. After this activity, I explained to the students what the next activity would consist of. This activity involved the students choosing one word from the list of antonyms that was given to them during the previous activity. For example, the student could choose the word ‘hot’. The students were to stay in their pairs and required to draw the environment they chose on the butcher’s paper and write and explain why it belonged to that particular environment. For example, why is it a ’hot environment and if it is a natural or built environment. The students were also told to halve the butcher’s paper into two, where they would write and draw on each half. Then the students were to draw the antonym for their chosen word. For example, the antonym for ‘hot’ is ‘cold’. As such, students did the same thing for their original word. The students were provided with materials such as glue, paper, coloured pencils and scrap coloured paper. In order to enhance their drawing/artwork, each pair was then required to get up and present what they did. After this activity, as a class we reflected on learning through a class discussion. Learning Experience Two: Through this learning experience, we focused on living and non-living things. Also, the students’ writing and vocabulary focused on English. I first explained to the class about living and non-living things and gave them some examples. I then explained how we identify living and non-living things and we had a class discussion after that. I gave each student two cards, where one had the word ‘living’ and the other ‘non-living’. I then put on a PowerPoint presentation that had photos of living and non living things. For each picture students were to put one card up of what they thought the picture was (living or non-living). I then took the class outside onto the grass area and playground, where the students were to write down all the living and non-living things they could identify. When we came back into the classroom, we discussed and wrote down on the IWB all of the different living and non-living things that they saw. We also discussed why they believed something was living or non-living. MeE Justification: The MeE experience draws on the idea of Rich Tasks from the New Basics Project, but it has some ‘embedded assessment procedures’ (Lecture 2). The purpose of the MeE is to implement learning experiences that are multi-operational, engaging and real-world value experiences (NSW Department of Education, 2006). The MeE task that I implemented involves my learning experiences and is multi–modal, engaging and experiences real-world values. Multi: The MeE task that I implemented in the classroom covers more than one KLA, including English, Human Society and Its Environment (HSIE) and Creative Arts. This was witnessed in activities where the topic was related to HSIE; however, it does incorporate English and Creative Arts. More specifically, in Learning Experience One when the students were focusing on wet and dry environments, the English KLA was introduced because they were learning about antonyms and justifying themselves through writing. Also, Creative Arts was integrated, as the students had to create an artwork representing different environments. Through Learning Experience Two, English and HSIE were integrated through the students learning about living and non-living things and then writing down what they viewed as living and non-living. Therefore, both learning experiences are integrated across different KLA’s. In addition, in my learning tasks my activities were designed to be multi-operational. This is seen through Learning Experience One, where students created their own version of the environment on the butcher’s paper. Hence, this will allow the students to generate their own learning methods instead of completing teacher worksheets. Learning Experience One consisted of different learning tasks, such as class discussions, group work, presenting work to the class, designing and writing about environments and viewing informative videos of wet and dry environments. Learning Experience Two was also multi-operational, as the students were required to go outside and write down what they believed to be living and non-living. Instead of completing a teacher worksheet, students were involved in discussions and were also tested on their living and non-living knowledge through the PowerPoint and also identifying what is living and non-living. Overall, both learning experiences were multi-operational, as students undertook a variety of tasks. Also, the learning experience varied across a number of different KLA’s. Engaging: The learning experience about ‘Environments’ was engaging to the students. Through this ‘engaging’ procedure, an engaging learning experience consists of high affective, high cognitive and high operative, as well as students reflecting on their work. The MeE task was high affective because students enjoyed their activities. This was seen through observing the students. Also, it became clear that the students were engaged in Learning Experience One, as all the students were communicating and discussing in pairs about the environment. Also, through class discussion it showed that students were engaged as they were putting their hands up and giving input. Also, all of the students completed their art work and written work about the environment. Through Learning Experience Two, the students were also engaged. This was displayed through the discussions and also through the PowerPoint tasks, where the students had to place a card in the air if they believed the picture was a living or non-living thing. All the students placed their cards in their air, which showed that they were engaged. Also, student engagement was seen when all of the students were required to go outside and write down all the living and non-living things they saw. All the students came back into the class with many things they had named, and they showed that they were enthusiastic because they all wanted to explain their findings to the rest of the class. The MeE task was a high cognitive task for students. The tasks supported the intellectual quality dimension of Quality Teaching. The reason for this is that through the tasks students were required to complete higher order thinking. This could be witnessed through the learning experiences, as the students were required to think deeply in order to justify why they believed the environments they drew was that type of environment. Hence, the students needed to have prior knowledge and understand the different types of environments. The students were introduced as to why an environment is that particular environment. Also, the students were required to complete higher order thinking when they had to name all of the living and non-living things in their school environment. Some students were being tricked into which things were living and which were non-living. In addition, through the learning experiences students were communicating about what they learnt through class discussions. Also, displaying what they had learnt was evidenced when the students had to demonstrate with their partner the environments that they drew and then explain it in front of the class. In addition, the MeE task was high operative. The reason for this is that the task required the students to be in pairs to draw, write and discuss different environments. More specifically, through this task students were able to be better learners because they could learn new ideas from their peers. Also, through the tasks I was giving to them, the students’ positive reinforcement allowed them to complete their tasks with confidence. Those who needed extra guidance were given it during the tasks. In addition to this, the tasks allowed the students to reflect on their learning. This could be clearly seen at the end of the learning experiences when the students had to reflect on what they had learnt through the tasks. Experience: It is clear that the learning experiences cover KLA’s such as English, HSIE and Creative Arts. Through this, students learn about their environments as well as create art works for environments and develop writing skills. The learning experiences allowed students to relate to the lesson, as it related to their everyday experiences. This was evidenced when students were taken outside into a real-world environment and asked to identify all the living and non-living things. This proved a challenge for the students, as they had to find the most amount of living and non-living things. Thus, the students began to challenge each other during this learning experience. Read More