School ofPractice

Professional Education
3

102605 Professional Practice Community Engagement - Reflection

Pre-service Teacher Details

Pre-service Teacher Name: Pre-service Teacher ID: 17789022

Rima Ali
Pre-service Teacher Phone Number: 0451108769 Pre-service Teacher Email Address:
17789022@student.westernsydney.edu.au

Placement Details: If you haven’t 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: Smart kids Academy Placement Phone Number: (02) 9644 4262

Placement Address: 2/23 A Rodd St, Birrong Placement Email Address:

NSW 2163 Smartkidsacademy@hotmail.com

Contact Person:
Rabia Kattar

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. (Remember theses can also be used in your Weebly so think carefully about your learning)

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?

This form is to be completed and submitted to the notes/docs section of your profile within InPlace.
Students who do not submit on time (TBA on vUWS announcements) will receive an FNS.
The practicum undertaken at Smart Kids Academy provided me with the ability to gain skills
in areas of programming work, differentiating to allow accessibility, applying problem
management strategies and building rapport. The tutoring centre is government funded with
many of the students that attend deriving from low socio economic families. The centre is
located in the western suburbs of Sydney and a majority of the students being EAL/D
students. This was a different teaching environment than I was accustomed to making it
exceptionally challenging for me. Most of the work provided that had already been
programmed was not accessible for the EAL/D students, I was required to alter the work to
allow for differentiation for these students. At first this task was appointed to me without any
assistance, needless to say the class didn’t run too smoothly. I then requested to observe a
class like this before being provided the opportunity to teach an EAL/D class again. After
thorough observation I equipped myself with the necessary tools and understood the
necessity of scaffolding and basic concepts to provide differentiation. I then applied these
newly acquired tools to the class I was teaching and I automatically was able to see how
much more accessible the work was to ESL students or students who had learning
difficulties.
Additionally the centre also had students enrolled that displayed signs of undiagnosed ADD
or ADHD. Teaching these diverse learners was initially somewhat problematic for me. I was
previously under the assumption that providing engaging and effective content was solely
what made a successful lesson. I began to quickly realise that engaging content was not
enough to run the lesson smoothly. I needed to develop my authority amongst the students
while simultaneously building rapport in order to systematically deal with behavioural issues. I
referred back to my previous knowledge of behavioural management applying the strategies
of both positive and negative reinforcement. I also applied strategies of differentiation in
areas of incorporating ICT to make the work more engaging and accessible for students with
learning difficulties.

While undertaking my practicum at the Smart Kids Academy tutoring centre I was provided
with the opportunity to teach I diverse range of learner abilities. The centre offered one on
one lessons for high school students. This task was slightly more difficult than I also had
imagined, this was due to the fact that I was unfamiliar with the text the student was studying
for her novel study. I was faced with the challenge with completely familiarising myself the
text in a short amount of time in order to aid the student in analysis of the text. Furthermore
the Centre offered selective school preparation, this was an excellent opportunity for me as it
allowed me to familiarise myself with the necessary requirements of selective schooling.
Although this class was beneficial it was also a challenge as the classes were large groups
and I often had difficulty assisting all students smoothly as I had not been previously
accustomed to teaching such a large group.
As I am a secondary trained pre-service teacher I did not have much experience teaching
primary students. This challenged me as I had to modify my behavioural management
strategies as well as modify the expected level of knowledge that I assumed the students
acquired. I had to tailor my teaching approach to really scaffold students into activities.
The practicum I undertook at Smart Kids Academy was an excellent opportunity for me to
teach students with diverse linguistic, religious, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. It
also provided me with an excellent platform to work on my differentiation skills in order to
tailor activities for a diverse range of learners. Furthermore the programming of work prior to
conducting classes allowed me to proficiently select and organise relevant material. Through
the observation of colleagues and team teaching I was able to improve my own practice and
mirror positive skills and strategies of the supervising teacher within my own practice. My
supervising teacher was nurturing and informative, she provided me with relevant social and
cultural context and knowledge about her students. She also informed me how to effectively
and subjectively deal with majority of the behavioural problems that I encountered. This
taught me that there is a necessity for holistic learning in every learning environment and that
I must know my students and how they learn in order to effectively teach them. I hope to
apply all the knowledge I have acquired throughout this practicum to my own pedagogical
practice in future and constantly reflect and modify my pedagogy to ensure I am adhering to
the AITSL standards. I also hope to, in future, be as informative and nurturing as my
supervising teacher if I am to take on practicum students.