STANDARD 3
3.1.1 Set learning goals that provide achievable challenges for students of varying abilities and characteristics.
3.3.1 Include a range of teaching strategies in teaching.
While undertaking my internship at my current school, I am responsible for designing the science programs and lessons. Along with my Year 2 grade partners, we create a daily display of lessons using Google slides that we navigate through during the day. The artefact chosen shows one of the science lessons I led with my class, to conduct an investigation on the water cycle. In order to ‘set learning goals’ for students, I outlined success criteria for students to complete the assigned tasks (3.1.1). Success criteria “tells the learners how they will recognise if they have been successful” and “can be used by the learners for self or peer assessment, promoting greater learner autonomy” (Crichton and McDaid, 2016, p. 193). Teachers should provide success criteria that is vague enough for students to apply their own knowledge and imagination, rather than restricting and limiting their potential. I also ‘provided achievable challenges’ to students by giving students an optional challenge task to promote higher-order thinking and allow for critical-reflection of the topic (3.1.1).
A ‘range of teaching strategies’ were used throughout the lesson, such as observations, group discussions, making predictions, independent work, drawing conclusions based on results and consolidating knowledge through a quiz (3.3.1). Smith (2016) proposed key principles for learning in Science, which included ‘concrete preparation’ where the teacher familiarises students with ideas and terminology needed for the lesson, and ‘social construction’ where students form their own understanding through observations and questioning. While the ‘concrete operation’ phase was conducted as we set up the experiment together and discussed the four processes of the water cycle, ‘social construction’ occurred as students connected identified the water cycle processes in the container and reflected on their predictions (3.3.1). It is important to use a range of teaching strategies to cater for diverse learners, so I will continue to test new strategies to improve the learning outcomes of my students in the future.
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