Friday reflection 19/06

Each week, I gain confidence in my teaching. Teaching full days before the placement block has been an amazing
opportunity, and has given me experience in planning lessons, creating unit plans and assessments and conducting
lessons. I have also been able to reflect on my practice and create goals for each week to improve my teaching.
Today turned out to be a very chatty day for students, but I was able to build confidence in behaviour management
and implemented stricter management as students became rowdy as the day progressed.

Poetry: Free Verse

This lesson went quite well – I think this is due to the fact that each poetry lesson runs virtually the same but
implements a different poetry type. Students started off very chatty, so I reinforced expectations at the start of the
lesson. At one stage, Lucy intervened when the noise level became louder as students were working at their desks
and I was working one-on-one with a student; however, I should have stopped the lesson and had students change
their noise level. It was clear here that when students moved off from the floor to begin the task, they were
unsettled and took too long to begin the task. Many students also asked to work on the floor. I agreed in the
beginning, however when noise levels crept up, asked noisy students on the floor to return to their desks.
Similarly, I noticed many students not sitting at their correct desk. Here, I asked students to move back to their
correct spot due to the noise level and the fact that they did not ask to move. I found that a lot of students were
‘pushing the boundaries’ because Emily was away, so made sure to reinforce expectations throughout the lesson.

Maths: Shape

Again, this lesson went quite well, however during floor time, I should have re-stated the expectations of whether
students were to call out the answers or put their hands up. Perhaps, I could add visual cues to the slideshow to
assist with this. I also noticed in this lesson that a lot of students struggled with creating nets. I could have printed
nets for them to follow on each table to assist them with their understanding. During this lesson, I had a group on
the floor to work with when it was clear they were struggling. I also asked confident students to assist small
groups. I thought the differentiation in this lesson was great, however a lot of students did not finish the task.

Science: Landforms

I loved combining the two classes and team teaching with Erin. The students were engaged and eager to respond
to questions posed. I noticed in this lesson that a lot of students were again pushing the boundaries by sitting on
chairs during floor time. Here, we should have asked the students to move to the floor, as a lot of them used this
opportunity to whisper/chat. The floor time also went a little too long, creating some disengagement amongst the
group. We could have shortened the guessing game, or moved on to each landform more quickly rather than
spending so much time allowing students to guess the landform. When students moved off into their groups, they
were super chatty and it was clear that some were off task. I implemented strong behaviour management here,
reinforcing the expectations.

Overall, this week, the students were very chatty, however, I used stronger behaviour management to intervene
and make each lesson run smoothly. Team teaching made for an engaging lesson, and I enjoyed teaching with
Erin. We were able to ‘bounce off’ of one another, and the students enjoyed working collaboratively within the
lesson.

Goals for next week:

o Implement stronger behaviour management throughout the entirety of the lesson.

Friday reflection 12/06
I felt quite confident with how the lessons went today, however it is clear that I still need to implement stronger
behaviour management and manage lesson times better.

Morning: in the morning, I asked students when they came in to grab their science books and conduct their final
soil observation. Here, students were disengaged and talking over me when I was giving instructions. Emily
stopped the class and had them working much better. I realise here, that I should’ve stopped the talking myself
and implemented stronger behaviour management to manage the class, as we didn’t have much time to get the
observation done, and it was important that the students were using the time available well to complete the final
observation.

Poetry: I felt this lesson went well; however, I could have shortened the amount of time spent on the floor. I really
wanted to recap metaphors and similes as it was clear last week that a lot of students were not clear about those
devices, so spent a few minutes recapping these, which I thought was important. I also changed the examples used
here so that students had better examples to look at to aid their understanding. Though students were engaged, we
spent a long time creating a poem together, time that could have been better spent having them create their own. I
also could have put on relaxation music in the background as students worked on their poems. I could also
encourage students to read their poems to the class once they have finished.

Science: again, science was an engaging, exploratory lesson which had students working collaboratively to build
new knowledge. Similar to poetry, I felt as though we remained on the floor for too much of the lesson. I think I
could have sped up the amount of time we spent on the floor, as some students became disengaged. I did speed up
the recap, which saved time, however, could have timed discussions better to have enough time at the conclusion
of the lesson to ensure the learning intentions were met. It was also important to discuss the findings from the
experiment, but I ran out of time to do so. In future lessons, I aim to manage the time more wisely to ensure we
have time to discuss before the lesson ends. I also should have thought more carefully about how to explicitly
teach students how to do their column graphs. I could have attached photos of an already completed column graph
to scaffold their understanding. Also need to ensure the classroom is packed up before the lesson ends.

Maths: this was again an engaging lesson which I felt met the learning intention well. I ensured to complete the
quiz quickly to save time and it was clear that most students had remembered the learning from the prior week.
When using the whiteboards, I should have had these already set up to save time. I also could have asked students
to pick just one shape to show their understanding of splitting the shape. It was clear here that giving them 3
shapes to split was overwhelming, and trying to save time, I rushed through this experience.

Positively, the origami activity was very engaging for students, and students were able to explore the many ways
shapes can be split using composite shapes. Students then labelled the new shapes that made up the square,
demonstrating their understanding. Here, some students labelled shapes incorrectly, highlighting the importance
of revisiting shape terminology each week. This lesson also highlighted the importance of discussing further the
three criteria of a regular shape, as there is clear confusion surrounding what makes a shape regular or irregular.

Goals for next week:

o Implement stronger behaviour management throughout the entirety of the lesson.

Friday reflection 05/06
I left Friday afternoon feeling quite confident about how the day progressed, I considered the feedback given in
the prior weeks and felt that the day and individual lessons ran quite smoothly with the learning intentions met by
most students.

Poetry: though the lesson was well prepared, unfortunately we did not get through as much as I would have liked.
A valuable teaching moment occurred when introducing metaphors, as it was clear that the students
misunderstood what comprises a metaphor. With Emily’s help and explicit teaching, we were able to engage in a
great discussion about metaphors, and students began to provide better examples of metaphors, however it was
clear that a lot of students were still lacking the ability to identify and create a correct metaphor. Many students
instead gave examples of common phrases. I thought here that I should have had better examples of metaphors, as
the few provided were not the best examples. I also could have given students a specific topic to scaffold their
understanding when asking for examples. This discussion took a lot of time, and unfortunately a lot of students
did not complete a single poem. Understandably, the concept of Limerick poems are quite tricky, so it could’ve
been valuable to spend 2 lessons on this, or not implement the poetic devices similes and metaphors, and rather
had students simply focus on just creating a correctly structured limerick poem. I think adding the 2 devices
complicated the task and made students feel overwhelmed by the learning.

Maths: originally, the lesson and slideshow planned was not overly interactive, and simply had students learning
terminology through explicit instruction and naming shapes displayed on a presentation. Through feedback given,
we were able to adapt this lesson into an exploratory lesson, where in table groups, students labelled shapes given
to them using their prior knowledge. We then checked for accuracy in the responses and engaged in a discussion
of the prefixes used to identify shapes by counting the number of sides they have. The students were engaged with
this activity and it was clear that the learning intention was achieved. Though the lesson was quite engaging, there
were clearly times when some students were disengaged. This occurred when the ending quiz went for too long
and when individual students were invited to draw shapes on the board. Here, I could have asked students to all
have an opportunity to draw the shapes on individual whiteboards to engage them all or could’ve had students
move to the floor rather than stay on the tables. I also should have spent more time ensuring students were aware
of what exactly makes a shape regular/irregular. A lot of students guessed irregular shapes by saying that the
shape simply looks ‘weird’ or isn’t the shape you would usually see - highlighting the need to explicitly teach
exactly what makes shapes irregular and regular.

Science: this lesson was engaging and had explicit teaching throughout. Starting with mindfulness is something I
will continue, however I am now aware that I need to either have all students sitting on the floor listening to
poems, or give them 5 minutes of quiet time where they can do what they like (colour, read), as it was clear that
some students weren’t engaged or listening to the students reading. The starting recap for the lesson was different
to anything I’d done before and I enjoyed it, however it took up a lot of time. To maximise time for the remainder
of the lesson, I intend to choose 3-4 students to quickly speak in the following weeks to recap. It’s vital that this
recap only takes 1-2 minutes. Unfortunately, when I handed out the 2 sheets it was noticed that they didn’t fit
when glued in - I need to ensure to cut all worksheets and ensure they fit before the lesson to save time in the
lesson. The exploration with rocks went extremely well and it was clear students were very engaged. To conclude
the lesson, students came back to the floor to discuss their findings, which was very successful. Overall, I really
enjoyed this lesson.

Overall, I really enjoyed the day and look forward to implementing new strategies next week to ensure each
lesson goes well. Through reflection of the feedback given, Erin and I have been able to plan engaging lessons,
and I am grateful that I have learnt how to structure lessons around a clear learning intention.

Next week’s goals:

o Maximise time by spending less time on recaps.

o Give time checks to hurry students along when needed.
o Implement stricter behaviour management.
o Focus on structuring lessons to meet the learning intention. Always think about - ‘have we met the learning
intention?’ Engage in discussions at the conclusion of the lesson to ensure the learning intention is met -
Friday Evaluation 29/05
Friday began with a short assembly. During this time, I was able to set up for the lessons, including copying
task cards and materials needed for the following lessons. When I begin teaching multiple days, this will need
to be prepared the day before to ensure I am organised each day.

Poetry: I felt quite happy with this lesson, however I recognise that I should’ve been prepared with coloured
paper already out on the floor for students to collect. I also forgot to grab my task cards at the commencement
of the lesson – luckily, Emily noticed this before I did and grabbed them; however, I realise when teaching my
own class, I will need to ensure I have all materials needed. Though I accidentally forgot to engage in my final
activity whilst students were sitting down (brainstorming winter words for students to use as a starting point),
as soon as I realised, conducted this activity while students were engaged in their poetry writing. Through this
accident, I have realised that it is important to be flexible, and not let mistakes disrupt the lesson and rather,
stay calm and continue on with the lesson. In this case, I was able to quickly fix the issue by implementing the
activity whilst students were engaged. Unfortunately, students were unable to finish producing their poems
within this lesson. Due to this, I will ensure to implement each task at a quicker pace.

Science: I was well prepared with this lesson and brought in several soil samples separated for table groups in
containers. I also thought about clean up and brought in towels to cover the tables to ensure soil samples were
not spilt onto tables and the floor. I also ensured to have a layout of the table students were to write in their
books already drawn on the whiteboard to facilitate their understandings and save time within the lesson.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t prepared the word walls for this lesson, so will go in early this week to set up the word
walls ready for this week. I also should’ve thought about having an A3 version of the venn-diagram on the
whiteboard when explicitly teaching rather than an A4 version, as it was clear that some students were unable
to see due to the small sizing. Though this was a fun exploratory lesson, I agree that the learning intentions
may not have been fulfilled. Due to this, I aim to implement explicit teaching of soils at the start of this week’s
lesson before students conduct their second observation of their soil. I will also explicitly teach about rocks
before students explore to ensure the success criteria and learning outcomes are achieved. Following Emily’s
mentoring, I will also add these to the slideshow to ensure students are aware of the learning intentions of the
lesson and the success criteria. A fun lesson, but I realise I need to focus on behaviour management, and
ensure students are silent before I begin to talk.

Shape: This lesson was incredibly loud and I was unhappy with how I managed the group rotations. When
starting the rotations, I asked students if they would like one group to be further exploring Google Earth, rather
than exploring 2D shapes within the classroom; however, this meant that I would need to stay with one group.
Due to this, I did not engage with the other groups, and the lesson was very loud and I did not feel that it was
overly valuable. I resonate with Emily’s feedback, stating that when doing group rotations it is important to set
up more stations so that groups are smaller. When doing rotations next time, I will ensure to check in on each
group to ensure learning goals are being met.

Overall, I was quite happy with how the day went, and am very excited to implement the feedback given by
Emily to improve my practice as the weeks continue.

Goals for Next Week:

o Continue implementing time checks

o Work on Learning Intentions and Success Criteria and embed them into the slideshows
o Behaviour management
o Ensure all resources are set up before lesson commences.
Thursday Evaluation – Term Three 06/08
Science:

Today, the science lesson was very settled and students engaged well in their testing of absorbency. Most students
were able to conduct the experiment on each material and engaging in this experiment allowed them to use a visual
representation to understand the terms ‘soak’, ‘leak’ and ‘repel’. Understanding these terms was critical to the
assessment task, and it is expected that students use these terms accurately in the assessment. Due to this, Erin and I
have focussed on key terminology in this unit and add the words to the word wall with the definition underneath for
students to refer to and use across other learning areas if applicable. Reflecting on the unit so far, this has been very
useful and we believe this will really support students in their understanding of the unit.

In this lesson, we used a task card without a table – so, students had to create their own table underneath the task card
using the headings provided. It was clear that some students struggled to create this table, so it could be beneficial to
model how to draw a table or use students work as an example to support the students who were struggling. Creating
the table took some time for some students, so it is important to support students in this task so that they can work on
the experiment as quickly as possible.

Geography:

The geography lesson had a lot of teacher-talk time. The lesson may have ran smoother if students worked in groups
to explore each topographical feature on tables. Students could have then moved from table to table to inform
themselves about the features rather than listening to teacher-talk. This would have shortened the large time spent on
the floor. It was great to link the topographical features to the prior science unit. This supported students in their
understanding and they were excited to talk about how this unit links to the previous.

Students were engaged in the ‘quiz’ part of the lesson, however some students took longer than others, and those
finished had to wait for the next question. Anastasia suggested to print off the first few questions so that students
could work at their own pace and then get their work checked by the teacher to collect the next questions. This is an
amazing strategy that Erin and I will use in future lessons to support levels of engagement.

Overall, this was a good lesson, but engagement could have been supported more by modifying tasks slightly. By
engaging in a reflection with Anastasia, I was able to evaluate the lesson and discuss options we could have used to
make the lesson less teacher centred. These strategies will be used in upcoming lessons!

Goals for Next Week:

o Make sure to model the experiment to support students’ understanding.

o Ensure students ALL sit on the floor during teacher-talk time (some have been sitting on chairs during this
time – make expectations clear)
o Shorten floor time.
Thursday Evaluation – Term Three 13/08
Science:

The science lesson this week again had a lot of floor time. This has been an ongoing goal and after speaking to
Emily, we are going to try implementing shorter recaps in following lessons and focus on recapping 1-3 glossary
words rather than all of the words. Science does have a lot of explicit teaching and modelling; however, a lot of
floor time is wasted on activities or discussions that could be shorter. By shortening floor time, students will have
more time to work on the experiments. Over the last few weeks, I have been giving students 4-6 materials to test
so that they can experience how numerous materials differ in their properties. Unfortunately, several students do
not finish the experiments due to the shortened time allowed for experiments because of time spent on the floor.
Hopefully, by shortening floor time, students will complete all experiences with ample time left over to discuss
results. I think we have improved explicit teaching in this unit and focussing on ‘glossary words’ should support
students in their assessments!

Geography:

In this lesson, we implemented feedback from the week before about using a different task for our quiz, rather
than reading and doing each question as a class. By doing this a different way, students created their own
questions, and their peers answered them. This activity allowed students to move around the room and use their
knowledge to create and answer questions. Students were also quite creative in their questions and used what they
knew about reading the atlas to formulate their questions. Here, I used scrap paper for students to write their
questions on; however, I could have cut out coloured paper for students to write their questions on, which could
have then been added to the word wall. Throughout the lesson, students became a bit silly. I did use behaviour
management to settle them, however I could be more blunt with them to ensure they know my expectations. This
will be very important in the placement block when I teach full weeks.

Library/End of Day:

Students enjoy their library time! A couple of weeks ago, I finished the chapter of Harry Potter, but this cut into
the time in the library which meant students had to rush to borrow. Since then, I have ensured to stop reading to
make sure students spend enough time in the library, and I can see students enjoy having as much time in the
library as they can. I also received feedback from the students about using different voices to animate the
characters when reading Harry Potter. I will try this in the following lessons! When reading Harry Potter, there
are a lot of tricky names and spells. Emily and I made a point of explaining to students that sometimes we need to
decode words in our minds to read them. I love reminding the students that as teachers, we do not know
everything, and we are always learning too!

Goals for Next Week:

o Implement shorter recaps of lessons to reduce floor time.

o Introduce different ways of recapping lessons.

Thursday Evaluation – Term Three 23/07
Yay! Term three! This week Erin and I implemented our introduction lessons for our 10-week units for Science and
Geography. Both lessons included prior knowledge tasks to diagnose student’s prior knowledge and misconceptions.
From these lessons, I was able to diagnose understandings for both topics:

Geography: Good understanding of Continent names – Most had some knowledge of placement – some placed
continents upside down.

Science: Know some names of fabrics and materials and know that materials have different properties/uses. Want to
know how materials are processed and what are the strongest materials.

Within the science lesson, Erin and I co-taught. We brought all the students into Emily’s classroom to implement the
lesson. The introduction went quite well, and students started the lesson engaged, however, our introduction went for
too long, meaning the students sat on the floor for a lengthy amount of time and became fidgety and less interested as
the time went on. In this time, we played a YouTube video to introduce students to materials and their properties. I
did not have this video up and ready to go and noticed that getting the link up and video ready took valuable time
from our lesson.

For the exploration activity, students explored several materials and began to describe the properties of each. This
exploration was quite chaotic with both classes in one room, and behaviour was difficult to manage due to the large
number of students trying to explore the materials on tables. Anna suggested that in the next activity, we separate the
groups into both rooms. This worked perfectly in the next activity and is something Erin and I will implement in
future lessons – introduce together, engage in activities across separate rooms. By doing this, behaviour was better
managed, and it was easier to draw attention back when needed. Emily also noticed that within this lesson I often
returned to the same attention grabber. In future lessons, I need to implement different attention grabbers to ensure
less repetition. I also often used the same phrases, as Emily pointed out. Again, I need to be careful of this to ensure
lessons are engaging and not repetitive.

In the geography lesson, I worked with a TRT who supervised the lesson. I’ve noticed before with TRT’s that the
student’s behaviour can be more difficult to manage, however, I made sure to keep the lesson moving to ensure
students were engaged to reduce behaviour issues. The students enjoyed this lesson, and it was clear that most had
quite a good understanding of the Continents and where they are on the map. Students used Atlas’s to check their
understanding, and it was very interesting for them to see where they had made mistakes. Students engaged in great
conversations throughout this lesson, and it was clear that they enjoyed the task and exploring the Atlas’s. Within the
lesson, I noticed we had forgot to print the task cards. To manage this, I sent one child to Erin to ask if she had the
task cards printed – Erin was able to print them within the lesson and the issue was avoided. I was able to take
students out for a brain break within this lesson, and played a small game of ‘ALL IT.’

In the final lesson of the day, we read Harry Potter and then borrowed at the Library. Straight after lunch there was
an issue between students. I tasked two students with reading to the class, while I took students out individually to
sort out the issue. This worked well, and the issue was resolved. Library time was successful and students were
respectful of the library rules.

Overall, it was a good day, and I was able to understand the student’s prior knowledge for both new topics! I cannot
wait to implement these units and look forward to planning and implementing my inquiry project and placement
block.

Goals for Next Week:

o Continue implementing time checks

o Ensure all resources are set up before lesson commences (DOUBLE CHECK)
o Implement different attention grabbers.
o Be careful not to be too repetitive throughout lesson.