1.1 Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students
Seating plan for year 8 I&S class
I made this seating plan for my year 8 I&S class, as I found that every lesson students would be sitting in different seats every time and would argue about who took whose seat. I also created this seating plan as I found certain students distracted others. I paired students up with others who I knew worked well together, and minimised distractions by separating other students from each other. This seating plan was very successful and maximised all students’ engagement in the classroom.
1.2 Understand how students learn
1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds
German vocabulary about countries and languages
For the ‘about me’ unit in year 8 German, the students learn how to say where their family and they are from, as well as what language they speak (plus some extra countries and languages). Whenever I teach new vocabulary, I always ask students what words they may already know and then build off of that. In this instance, I asked where they or their families are from and whether they speak another language. This is engaged students as the content was relevant to them.
I have also had many students come to me saying what their preferred pronouns and names are, so that I can address them with what they are comfortable with.
1.4 Strategies for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students
8Ways Aboriginal learning handout
I attended a PD which was about the Aboriginal 8 Ways of Learning Pedagogy. In this PD I learnt about how Aboriginal students learn best. During discussions with my group, we discussed how we already include these strategies in our teaching. Some of these strategies included using story sharing through talking about our families during the year 8 German family unit, and deconstructing an essay structure so that students could reconstruct their own essays in year 8 Individuals & Societies. These strategies are also in line with the teaching learning cycle.
1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities
Year 7 German scaffolded PowerPoint
My year 7 German class needed to complete a research task about a German state. In order to help some of the lower level students, I created this PowerPoint scaffold with students to show them what the PowerPoint should look like, how many slides they need and what they should include on each slide. This was very valuable for the lower level students, as they had a clear structure of what to do for their own PowerPoint.
1.6 Strategies to support full participation of students with disability
Differentiated assessment task for student with a learning disability
I had a boy in my class who was at a year 3 level in his writing and struggled to write lengthy texts (i.e. essays and reports). I took this task and included a very clear scaffold at the bottom of the task sheet that he could follow. I included a range of different types of questions (e.g. short answer, multiple choice, etc.) under specific slides for him to answer. This was also helpful for the SSO has they had a clear understanding of what the student needed to complete.