2.1 Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area
To teach a year 5 and 6 class about persuasive texts, I planned a sequence of 6 lessons that involved multifaceted learning experiences and provided opportunities for students to demonstrate their understanding in a multitude of ways. The sequence enabled students to move from understanding persuasive techniques to analyzing various multimodal persuasive texts including essays, images and adverts to eventually creating their own persuasive text. These learning opportunities enables students to apply their new learning and understanding in interesting, authentic contexts to meet the curriculum outcomes. The teaching sequence enables me to employ various teaching strategies advocated by Tim McDonald (Classroom Management, 2013).
To ensure I was equipped to teach the content effectively, I conducted independent research about persuasive techniques and structures by consulting curriculum documents as well as SCSA and NAPLAN judging standards. I also read about McDonald’s teaching strategies and planned these into my teaching sequence in a way that I felt would enhance student learning.
The strategies and my reflection on the effectiveness of their implementation and how I would alter this next time follow below:
1. Questioning for engagement: This is an area I am definitely still working on and have noticed it is a difficult area even for established teachers. Some of the questions I used were: Why is/isn't this an effective persuasive text? How could you apply persuasive techniques to make it even more effective? What are the motives of the author? Is their argument fair? Why/why don't you agree with them? What would happen if everyone believed what the author was trying to persuade them to do or think? How could you improve your own persuasive text?
2. Increasing higher-level thinking: Using Bloom's Taxonomy to design learning tasks that cater for differentiation and challenge students to think, create and critique rather than reproducing work or rote learning. Consequently, I ensured each of my lessons enabled higher order thinking skills. For example, students evaluated other persuasive texts (including written, images, and video adverts) by analysing the persuasive techniques used and critiquing their effectiveness. Students had the opportunity to work as a group to apply their knowledge and understandings about persuasive techniques to create their own adverts, persuade their peers about particular topics, create persuasive scenarios through drama and finally write their own persuasive text.
3. Cooperative learning strategies: I utilised 'think, pair, share' a lot and had students brainstorm about topics onto A3 sheets in their own colour so I could easily see who was writing what and thus who was/wasn't grasping the concepts and contributing to the group.
4. Placemat: I tried this strategy for the first time and it worked great. I used it for one of the lessons where we began learning about persuasive techniques, critical thinking and "persuasion". Next time I would have the students do a gallery walk AFTER the learning sequence and then add further ideas to their own work. I also would have done this at the very end of the learning sequence rather than only after one lesson. Or, this could be done after each lesson and combined into a whole class placemat and then reflected on at the very end of the entire learning sequence. This could then form the reference point for revisiting the topic later in the year.
5. Ensuring equitable distribution: This was an area I definitely tried to focus on for this practicum and my mentor already had a jar which held popsticks with the students' names on it. However, I found that when I tried to call on students who did not frequently answer questions, they would take a very long time to answer or would not know the answer which interrupted the flow of the lesson. This is something I need to conduct further research into to address the question of WHY these students do not know the answer or why they do not feel comfortable having a go, as well as find other ways to check for understanding other than asking questions and pressuring students.
Overall, I felt the lesson sequences were effective and the teaching strategies I employed enhanced student engagement and learning. The group work, particularly having students write in their own colour and then presenting to the class provided accountability and an authentic audience for students.
2.2 Content selection and organisation
2.3 Curriculum, assessment and reporting
2.4 Understand and respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to promote reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians
2.5 Literacy and numeracy strategies
2.6 Information and Communication Technology (ICT)