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ART and SCIENCE of TEACHINGassignment template for INDUCTION COURSE NameChristopher Mannattendance8Your context(approximately 300 words)Please give brief information about your context:Your professional backgroundI graduated from Loughborough University in 2010 with a BSc (Hons) in Geography with Economics. After this, I applied at Sheffield Hallam University to enrol onto the Secondary Maths PGCE course. Following an interview it was recommended that I do the Subject Knowledge Enhancement Course in Mathematics for one year immediately before doing the professional year in 2011. I completed the PGCE in 2011/12 and gained QTS status in July 2012. During my PGCE year I gained experience by teaching Mathematics to various abilities of students whilst on 2 placements of 8 weeks and 16 weeks respectively.Your role and responsibilitiesAt Fairview International School I am responsible for the CIE Year 10 and 11 Geography classes. This involved me rewriting a scheme of work to follow that would ensure that the IGCSE content is studied in time to take the exam completely by the end of Semester 1 in Year 11. I am also teaching Grade 10G Mathematics which gives me experience of working in MYP and working collaboratively with other Fairview Campuses. Until recently I was teaching 7W Maths as well. I am also homeroom teacher for 11R in CIE which means I have every day contact with students who are currently taking exams, revising and applying for further education institutions.Your learnersMy students are now all aged between 14-18. Until recently however, I had a class where I only had 4 students aged between 9 and 11. All the classes I teach currently are mixed ability and include teaching pupils who may have major difficulties reading and writing English.Your professional development during the Induction(approximately 100 words)What did you expect to learn from this Induction? What went well? What could have been done better?Following this induction period I have learnt that the basic ideologies of pedagogy and teaching are not much different to the teaching styles I was introduced to through Mathematics Education material over the last two years. Marzano’s Art and Science of Teaching has shown me how there are many aspects to providing essential learning and teaching opportunities.I felt that it would be more of an induction as to how the school itself runs and how IB as a concept is managed in a school environment. This would have helped some people who have little/no classroom experience as they may have been worked into it slowly and learn basic pedagogical ideas rather than been given deep concepts about education that can be confusing at times.ASSESSMENT TASK 1Collaborative Group Essay (approximately 300 words)Working collaboratively in a small group (3 to 4 persons), evaluate your programme plan:-by suggesting the improvements you intend to make to the structure, balance, and content of the current programme plan; obtaining feedback from your peers on your intended improvements; and also how you are going to take these ideas forwardAfter analysing my Grade 10G Unit 3 programme plan both individually and as a group we decided to use Marzano’s 5 Instructional Design Questions as a starting point. For each Design Question we each looked at the extent to which my programme plan had each design question and how the programme plan could be improved.Instructional Design Question 1 corresponds to the establishment and communication of learning goals, tracking of progress and celebrating success. It was agreed that my programme plan was restrictive as tracking of progress was only managed by completion of textbook exercises and successes celebrated through summative assessment grades. I would change this by providing more feedback than just returning homework grades as pupils want to ensure that they are progressing and developing each lesson. There was however, a good communication of learning goals for each lesson which meant that students knew what they understood any new concepts.The programme plan does not provide a sufficient variety of learning modalities. The majority of lessons have repeated teaching strategies and involve individual textbook work as the main task. I would develop this to ensure that there are a higher proportion of group work, paired work and investigation/research tasks for pupils to develop concepts for themselves. Within our group discussion, Ms Dona outlined that there needed to be more detail provided for the assessment. She stated that the current assessments as written on the programme plan is not sufficient to provide students with opportunities to develop Declarative Knowledge fully. I intend to rectify this by ensuring that there is a formative or summative assessment task that enables pupils to, not only apply learned skills, but to show and analyse their own understanding with reflection.As far as Instructional Design Questions 4 and 5 can be evaluated, there is minimal evidence to suggest that there are tasks that enable pupils to ‘experiment with new knowledge’. Each lesson follows a similar structure, with a teacher exposition and demonstration followed by individual tasks from the textbook. We discussed in our group the idea that independent bookwork is not necessarily individual learning. To show learning, there has to be more feedback and celebration of success other than textbook answers providing students with a right or wrong answers.Task 2Critical Analysis Report ; (approximately 700 words)In your report, you should reflect on your overall experience of the induction course and teaching in your school. a) Evaluate your own classroom practice by discussing the sources you have used for this evaluation; the reasons for choosing these sources; and the major issues raised by your sources b) Through self-evaluation and peer evaluation, critically analyse the significant areas for improvement to your professional practice; the reasons why you consider such areas to be significant for your professional developmentFollowing 2 informal observations and a formal observation by Mr Yoga, I have received both written and oral feedback that has shown where I have strengths and areas for improvement. The progression from lesson to lesson has shown where I developed over the induction time period. My first informal observation was on 12th September. As far as showing progress and development, I felt the lesson did not show me in a teaching capacity only as a facilitator of learning. The main task was a follow on lesson, which meant that students were building upon already established concepts about earthquakes. It was recommended that I continue to provide lessons in a way that STT>TTT and that this would guide pupils to learn from each other and develop communication skills when presenting work.This led to me having a formal observation on 26th September. I felt that this lesson wasn’t as student-led as I wanted it to be. There were a variety of individual tasks that related to pupils working on both problem solving tasks and exam style questions. I tried to adopt an approach that would ensure that pupil’s learning was not restrictive, however my teaching approach became a little too teacher led and lecture style. This was reflected in my feedback where it was recommended that I enable pupils to present their learning and understanding to the rest of the class to generate model answers.After discussions with Ms Nava in the debriefing session, it was decided that this observation be an informal one as the QAT form was insufficient for the lesson. It was seen as unfair to be assessed on a IB QAT form when teaching CIE. Following the induction sessions and reading chapters of Marzano’s Art and Science of Teaching, I have learned to approach lessons with more purpose and having specific learning objectives for pupil’s learning to progress.All of my observations have outlined that I have STT>TTT. My aim is to continue to facilitate pupil’s learning by providing engaging tasks that allow peer discussion as well as individual learning. Vygotsky believes that peer involvement is a key factor in allowing pupil’s to engage their ‘zone of proximal development’ (Vygotsky, 1978). I consider group work activities to be a significant area in which I could improve. This is outlined by Mr Yoga during my formal observation feedback dated 10th October. Allowing for group discussions would enable Student Talk Time to be greater than Teacher Talk Time and ensure that concepts were being built in a classroom. This idea is encouraged by Hodgen and Wiliam (18:2006) where they discuss the ‘encouragement of open discussion’ as a method in whole class question and answer sessions to encourage pupils to understand how and why they know an answer. I feel I do this particularly well in lessons, when questioning pupils I have tried to encourage them to develop further by performing what I call the DEE method. The first step is Description, then Explanation followed by Evaluation. Specifically in Humanities, I feel it is important to understand the cause and effect aspect of a decision or event. By describing, explaining and evaluating students should develop a greater conceptual understanding of an idea. We should not be speaking to, but with. That is second nature to any good teacher. —Noam ChomskyDuring my time at Fairview I feel I have developed as a teacher. I am now capable of providing lessons that are engaging and stimulating. I have used a variety of different teaching strategies which are highlighted in my observation feedbacks. I have also developed a clearer understanding of the process of being a reflective thinker. By reflecting on my actions in a classroom, I am able to react to and plan for situations that may have occurred in a classroom. By being a reflective teacher, I am able to develop, adapt and self-evaluate and become a reflective professional. This means that I am engaging in a process of looking backwards to move forwards.One thing I wish to develop as an individual is a clearer understanding of IB as a concept. Having mainly taught CIE and been observed teaching CIE I feel that sometimes I approach teaching MYP in the same way. If it were at all possible an MYP workshop may be beneficial for when I have to produce my own programme plan. With a greater understanding of the concepts behind MYP and IB, I feel I may be a little clearer in my own teaching approach.References HODGEN, J. and WILIAM, D. (2006) Mathematics Inside the Black Box: Assessment for learning in the mathematics classroom. Department of Education and Professional Studies.VYGOSTKY, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ................
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