School of Education

Professional Practice 3
102095 Secondary PP3 Self Reflection Form

Pre-service Teacher Details

Pre-service Teacher Name: Pre-service Teacher ID:

Zoe-Lee Fuller 16343229
Pre-service Teacher Phone Number: Pre-service Teacher Email Address:
0428493528 16343229@student.westernsydney.edu.au

Placement Details: If you havent complete 60 hours face to face you must provide a
detailed statement of how your experience meets the outcomes for Professional
Practice 3. Attach evidence.

Placement Name: Placement Phone Number:

Refugee Action Support Program (RAS) 02 9630 3793
Placement Address: Northmead Creative Placement Email Address:
and Performing Arts High School,
Campbell St, Northmead, NSW. fiona.clifton@det.nsw.edu.au
Contact Person:
Fiona Clifton or Janet Squire or Maria Simpson

Describe in 500-800 WORDS any features and benefits of the setting you attended. Consider
number of students, location details, age of students, types of educational programs offered and any
other salient aspects of the experience. Consider how this experience will contribute to your
development as a beginning teacher.

AITSL Standards

The criteria for pre-service teacher reflection focus, the first, second, third and sixth standards.
1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds
1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full
range of abilities
2.2 Content selection and organisation
3.1 Establish challenging learning goals
6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice

Subsidiary questions:
What surprised you about your learning in your community setting?
What research about communities did you engage with before you commenced?
Why were you surprised about your learning?
What goals did you set for yourself in your service learning activities?
In what ways were you communicating with your community participants?
What do you believe the participants in your service learning project learned?
What did you learn? How will the experience shape you as a teacher in a classroom?
How would you help someone else learn what you discovered?
Due Date 2H: XXXXXX 2016 accompanied with your Timesheet and signed
Report.
Submissions after XXXXXX will receive an N grade. At the following HECS census date, if
the work is still incomplete, this will become an AF grade. This is University policy.
The AF grade can be changed when you complete the work. You must also keep a hard or
electronic copy of your assignment.

Submit this form online via InPlace. Your PP3 Report written by the Contract
Person, is mailed by them or delivered by you to the PP3 assignment box in the
SOE.

I was surprised by just how difficult it could be to communicate with someone whose English
was so basic, because I have not had much interaction with individuals like this, with the
exception of my children when they were learning to talk. One of the students I helped
regularly had only been in Australia and learning English for about 6 months, so we had
many misunderstandings, and it was difficult to converse with him in more detail than I
would a toddler. In fact, I have an easier time conversing with my three-year-old son. I think
this was what surprised me most, and he (the student) even pointed out to me that trying to
talk to him must be like talking to a toddler. I suppose another aspect to this surprise was the
frustration that we shared in trying to converse, for both of us were limited to using the most
basic terms. This made discussing his school work very difficult, as being in Year 11, his work
required the use of far more specific and specialised language. We often resorted to using
Google translator, which helped some, but sometimes resulted in further confusion, as the
minutiae were often lost in translation. Fortunately though, as a mother of two, and twice
survived conversing with toddlers, I have much patience and empathy for those who lack
adequate words for expressing themselves. It was a valuable learning experience, for me to
practice and test this in a new context, for I realise now that all students deserve the same
patience, not just those who are learning English as a second, or subsequent, language.

It was my goal during this professional practice to facilitate student learning as much as
possible, while simultaneously holding myself back (I can sometimes be one to simply take
over when I can see that I can do a job better, or better to my liking, than someone else). I
caught myself, early on, trying to take over with the same student mentioned above. He was
trying to complete a creative writing assignment, and having a very difficult time of it. I had
started out by trying to give him an outline of what he must include in his story, however he
did not really understand, nor did he have the words in English to be able to do it. Through
much discussion, I was able to piece together the gist of his storys plot, and I started writing
it for him. After a few minutes I realised that this would not help him at all, not with his
language acquisition in general, nor with trying to continue writing the story later at home.
Thus, I relinquished control and let him write it, satisfying myself with acting as his
thesaurus, supplying him with alternative choices for words, and effectively boosting his
vocabulary range.

In later sessions with this student, and others, I would write down the teachers instructions
and such, and then explain them to the student more clearly once the rest of the class were
working. This allowed me to clarify for students what the teacher expected of them, any
unfamiliar terms the teacher may have used, and connect it to the students current level of
English understanding. With this student mentioned above, I soon discovered he had started
making himself a list of words to learn, which he had translated back to his own language. I
helped him by adding to this list. He would look up the translation of the word, and then we
would discuss the word how to say it, what it meant, and how to use it conversation. I
noticed a vast improvement in this students English over the course of my Professional
Practice 3 at Northmead Creative and Performing Arts High School, and am honoured and
humbled to think that I may have contributed to this.