Author: Teresa Swensen

I graduated from Flinders Universtiy in April 2016, and now in 2017 I am currently in my fourth year of teaching in a primary school.
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Writing Plus

Below is evidence towards focus area 6.4.

In 2019, I attended Writing Plus which was designed to improve Year 1-7 students’ writing. Writing Plus allowed participants to gain a deep understanding of the English language and how it works to make meaning. As a result of the course, I built a stronger knowledge of sentence, clause and word level grammar to meet the needs of teaching the Australian Curriculum: English. The course provided strategies to identify language features that students use and helped to inform me of what the next teaching steps would be. Additionally, it built on my ability to provide relevant feedback in order for students to improve their understanding and application of language.

As a result of undertaking this course I provided my year 3 students with a range of resources and started to build their understanding on simple, compound and complex sentences. I undertook a range of grammar lessons which were incorporated into the current unit of work to build on their knowledge of noun groups and the different types of verbs. As students gained an understanding of functional grammar they were able to initially locate the process, participant and circumstance in a clause and join clauses together with sub-coordinating conjunctions to build complex sentences. This was a goal for many of my year 3 students, as they were writing correct simple and compound sentences.

 

 

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MAPA Training

In April 2019, I completed the MAPA training programme. The programme’s focus is on teaching management and intervention techniques to help manage escalating behaviours. MAPA® Training is Certified by BILD-ACT under the Restraint Reduction Training Standards. The training was organised at school level to meet the needs of teachers to support students enrolled at the school.

This training provides evidence towards focus area 6.2.

 

 

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Professional Learning Community

A Professional Learning Community is a group of teachers who work collaboratively within the school environment to improve student outcomes. As a school wide initiative, the year 3 teachers formed a PLC with a focus on writing. Throughout the year, as a year 3 teacher, I have met with the year 3 team in meetings to focus on student achievement.

The PLC meeting has followed a specific format where each teacher has shared progress of six high band students, and other students as necessary. As a team, we discuss our previous commitments and discuss outcomes of what we did achieve or didn’t. At the conclusion of the meeting we form new commitments and agree on a date for the next meeting.

As part of a year 3 team, we have committed to writing groups, bump it up walls, and student goals. Resources have been shared amongst the team to reduce work load and improve teacher effectiveness. 

This annotation is evidence towards focus area 6.3.

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Bump It Up

As part of a school wide focus on improving student writing, I created a Bump it up wall in my classroom. The specific purpose of the wall is to provide students a visual representation to allow them to track their writing. Each writing sample on the wall has specific writing goals linked to it, which were drawn from the literacy continuum and Brightpath. Students are involved in small group conferences and together determine three very explicit and individual writing goals. As students reach their writing goals, they receive a leaf to place on the tree. An added benefit of the Bump It Up wall, is that it allows students to self-assess their work and for some students reaching a higher level proves to be a strong motivator. They can see exactly what they need to do to improve their work, and the samples show the quality of work that can be produced at each level. 

Opportunities to improve writing are provided daily when students are provided a picture prompt from Pobble365. Whilst I provide students a focus on a concept taught in English, such as including a similie, they are provided a task such as describing the setting. Each day I work with a small group of students working at a similar level on similar goals and decide if goals have been reached, provide a short individual lesson or write new goals. These groups are meeting whilst other students are working on the daily writing task.  

Reflecting on the Bump It Up Wall, I have noticed a genuine focus from students in reaching their goals and reaching higher levels in their writing compared to earlier in the year when students had only goals they were working towards determined by me.

This demonstrates evidence towards focus area 1.5, focus area 2.5, focus area 3.1, and focus area 5.2.

 

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Professional Networking

Connecting with other education professionals is extremely valuable to ensure I continue to learn, be kept up to date, consider new research or as a means to bring fresh ideas to my classroom. With this in mind I have a range of networks to draw upon. A list of my current networks are

  • Twitter – I have followed over 200 educators, and organisations and Tweet to my followers interesting blog posts and ideas related to education.
  • Facebook – I participate and engage with other teachers on several Facebook groups including
    • Year 3/4 Australian Teaching Ideas
    • Australian Year 3 Teachers
    • Toowoomba Autism Noticeboard
    • Junior Primary/Primary Teachers of Adelaide
    • Surviving Casual Teaching
  • Education Queensland Discussion Groups including
    • Curriculum into the Classroom
    • Grade 3-4 Teachers
    • Learning Difficulties
    • OneSchool Community
  • Flinders University Alumni

These connections contribute towards achievement of focus area 7.4.

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Special Education and Inclusion: The Opportunities and the Challenges

To address my knowledge and skill in teaching students with special needs I started a post-graduate topic. For the first assignment we were required to research inclusive practices and the opportunities they present as well as the challenges in the classroom. This assignment and associated research is evidence towards focus area 6.4.

[embeddoc url=”https://teresaswensen.edublogs.org/files/2017/01/Assignment-1-174ualq.pdf” viewer=”google”]

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Quiet Space

This quiet space was set up in the back corner of the classroom to provide a space for a student with Autism Spectrum Disorder and provides evidence towards focus area 1.6.

The space was set up with a dark tent to block out the bright flurescent lights in the classroom and a basket of interest items to suit the student with ASD. The student could use the tent upon reasonable request and was allowed to use it when it was determined the student required time to regulate. Additionally, the use of the tent and other activities, such as the class iPad, were offered as reward activities for work completed.