30/05/2016 03/06/2016- Day 34 Day 38 - Professional Placement - Berserker

Street State School

On Monday afternoon I attended this weeks staff meeting. One of the reminders that
came up was; when there is a teacher aide in the room whilst teaching make sure
that they rotate between all the students and dont just sit at the lower ability students
table. I always planned my lessons when I knew I had a teacher aide in the room to
sit with the lower ability students to ensure that they had the extra assistance that
they needed and so that these students could stay up to speed with the rest of the
class. The reasoning behind this suggestion was because in a classroom where
there is a qualified teacher and a teacher aide the teacher is more qualified to help
these students and to teach them. The next lesson that I teach, where there is a
teacher aide present, I will plan the lesson around both I and the teacher aide
rotating through all learner ability levels to ensure that this becomes a practice for
when I have my own class.
Another subject that was brought up at the staff meeting was Sports Day that is
being held on Tuesday the 14th of June, 2016. The principal mentioned that all staff
will be supervising (including preservice teachers) and that each staff member is to
ensure that on the roster that comes out prior to make sure that every staff member
is allocated a break. I was shocked when she said that there was seventy staff
supervising and every staff member was needed! This is an enormous amount of
staff and I have never thought about how much work and effort that goes into a
sports day! I am excited to be a part of this and cannot wait for the day to arrive. It
will be great to experience my first ever sports day as a preservice teacher and not a
student. I cannot wait to reflect on the operations of the day and aspects of the
carnival that I have not witnessed from this point of view before.
Tuesday during the maths lesson I taught the year two students number patterns
again. We have been going over number patterns a lot this week as only one year
two student could answer correctly number patterns on their maths exam the week
prior. I found that the lessons on number patterns I had been teaching the students
they werent retaining the knowledge that I was trying to teach. Today I decided to
teach them the same content but to change my strategy and make the patterns out of
MABs instead of numbers written onto the board. I went through strategies with the
students to firstly identify the number that was being represented and then working
out the rule of the pattern, to lastly identify the next three numbers in the sequence.
Success! The students were starting to retain the information and were enjoying the
lesson. I found that this lesson had been more successful than the other number
patterns the prior week and had a feeling of achievement along with the students.

Also today I taught the year twos and year threes number patterns also but again
changed the activity to reflect a new strategy. I decided to do a more hands on
approach this lesson, I thought this would make the lesson more engaging for the
students. I gave the students a blank star chain (attached to the lesson plan) and a
dice. The students had to roll the dice to find the numbers that we were going to add
and subtract from their starting number (also determined by the dice) and when they
had completed the number pattern give the activity to the student sitting next to them
to solve. The students had a great time creating their star chains and marking their
completed activity once their partner had given it back to them. I found that
behaviour management was fantastic and that no one was off task at all during the
activity. This strategy is something that I will always remember for future lessons to
teach future classes number patterns including addition and subtraction.
Tuesday last session is usually the time slot that is allocated to history. We have
completed our history unit for the term and the assessment has also been
completed. I thought today, with suggestions from my mentor teacher, that we would
do something fun in history. I divided the students into groups of two and gave them
a significant date in the history of Rockhampton (which is what our topic was about
for this unit) and what happened on that date. Each pair of students had a different
event and they had to write a sentence about that date and draw illustrations to show
what happened also. I told the students that we were writing a book on the history of
Rockhampton and that when all the pages were completed I would turn it into a book
to show the students. The students were very engaged and loved the lesson. They
were revising knowledge that we had already learnt this term but having fun whilst
completing the lesson.
During the last session, the students and I were that engaged on the proceedings of
the lesson I forgot to take the students to library. I cant believe that I had missed this
in the routine. When this had been brought to my attention I quickly took the students
down to the library before the next class scheduled to go to the library had arrived.
When we had arrived at the library I noticed that the rows of the shelves of the books
had been changed around. (this happened yesterday when our usual library lesson
is) The new layout of the library made it easier to watch the students borrowing whilst
ready a book to the students that were not borrowing. I found that the behaviour
management of this lesson was a lot easier to manage then a normal library session
and enabled me to finish reading the book to the class without many interruptions. I
had enough time to ask the students to recall what had happened in the text and ask
them QAR questions about the text. After our 15-minute session in the library I took
the students back up to the classroom to complete our book on Rockhampton.

Wednesday was Jersey Day at school to celebrate the State of Origin that would
occur that night. All the staff and students were able to come to school in their origin
jerseys or the students that did not have their teams colours could come to school in
free dress. It was a cold coin donation to dress up for the day. My mentor teacher is a
serious Queensland fan so the classroom had a Queensland supporters flag that
was three meters long hanging from the windows outside of the building for everyone
to see. She also dressed up in maroon colours with her jersey, red wig, maroons hat,
cape and red inflatable hand. I wore my jersey, cape and flashing maroon novelty
sunglasses. The atmosphere in the classroom was positive and the students were
happy to see us dressed up. In the middle session there was a basketball game held
in the stadium with teachers and year six students who participated to portray
Queensland vs. New South Wales. The whole school was there and there was lots of
fun banter. I noticed though with all the excitement that the students were not on task
during the days lessons. I tried to teach the students a number problem strategy in
maths and the students were off task and not retaining any of the information at all.
We decided that I would quickly go over this lesson on Thursday so that the students
could complete whilst on task.
During Thursdays maths lesson I presented the same number sequence problem to
the students from the day before. I found that the students picked up the knowledge
that I was trying to present to them and they manage to solve the problem a lot
quicker than the day before. This was a great lesson for me to see how different
events in the school can affect the learning in the classroom. The year two students
that I have been taking for maths I noticed were having a lot of problems counting
and recognizing numbers. For maths today I took the year two students down to the
rubber area and had them take a student whiteboard and whiteboard marker. I got
different students to count different objects and write it onto their student whiteboard.
After all the students reported back with their numbers we went around to the
different objects as a class and counted the objects to make sure that the numbers
were correct. This also allowed the students more time counting. I thought the lesson
was a success as all the students were engaged and on task. Also the behaviour
management was easy to maintain.
This week also I have been sitting in on parent teacher interviews. I thought it was
interesting to see that different aspects of a child that the teacher was reporting on to
the parents of that child, they were having the same issues at home. (e.g. off task,
talking to much etc.). It was also great to see the parents offering strategies to the
teacher that they knew worked for their child. For example, one of the parents
suggested that their child responded well with the head down on the desk and

thumbs up when they had finished their work so that they did not disrupt the class.
We used this strategy in the classroom and it was effective with that child. I thought
that this was a great example of the teacher working with the parents/ careers in the
educative process of the student.
I am excited at what next week brings. It will be my last full week in this class for this
term and I am sad to be leaving this class but also excited for what the future is going
to bring.