Table of Contents

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Table of Contents

• Pedagogy and Assessment
• EPT 114, The Maths Lesson
• EPT 114, Evaluation of Lessons Observed

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Pedagogy is the jargon we use for teaching. It is
also known as the art science of teaching or
the art craft of teaching. Pedagogy is the
what you do and how you do it, of
teaching. Assessment is fundamental to your
pedagogical practices you need to know if what
you are teaching has worked and how much each
student has understood to teach well. Assessment
takes a wide range of forms and youll probably
be familiar with formal tests and essays.
However, there are other ways of approaching
assessment, depending on what you are trying to
find out, for example observations, checklists,
portfolios, creative presentations, power points,
anecdotal records. Its important to remember
that assessment is part and parcel of what you do
on a daily basis as a teacher.
(Ailwood, J. 2004 CSU Bathurst, Tutorial Notes).
Pedagogy Assessment
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• Pedagogy aims at setting in order pupils so as
  they become willing learners of the curriculum
  set out for them. This now depends on teachers
  to be interactive so that students are engaged
  and interested to learn.
• It is important that a teacher understand how
  best a student can learn and how they approach
  what they are instructed to do. A teacher needs
  to know how the students need to be supported as
  learners. Teaching does depend on an educated
  understanding of the learners and a personal
  interaction with the students.
• L guess the question of how children learn best
  will be debated for many years to come but to a
  degree I believe it is also indicative of a
  teachers ability.

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Children must feel comfortable and at ease with
the learning environment, problems can
arise when students are expected to succeed in an
environment which is not conducive to learning.
A child cannot learn when he/she does not feel
secure, wanted or comfortable for whatever the
reason may be. This responsibility falls mainly
into the arms of the teacher and the pedagogical
ability for them to correct a wayward situation.

• A good relationship between the teacher and the
  student is of the upmost importance. There must
  be a sense of trust friendship and genuine
  concern relayed to the student if they are to
  confidently and competently learn, The art and
  science of teaching needs to think of the child
  as a whole and not just a mind.

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• Assessment is the review of your pedagogy, or it
  could be seen as a quality assurance test on
  yourself as a teacher. The assessment would show
  you the overall outcome of your teaching on the
  class as an average.
• More importantly it tests the students knowledge
  of what they have learnt for themselves and an
  indication as to whether they have graduated on
  to the next level of learning.
• Assessment is also the testing of curriculum
  knowledge and apart of Board of Studies
  accountability and is also an important teacher
  skill.

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• And so as we learnt in our tutorial What is
  assessment?
• Assessment is the process of gathering evidence
  of what a student can do for a purpose.
• It is the systemic and purposeful method of
  looking at where students are and where they need
  to go.
• It should inform students of their progress and
  help teachers identify what students need to
  learn.
• It should provide information so teachers can
  plan and develop curriculum.( Taken from lecture
  notes, Week 4, 18 March 2004)

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• Practical Report

Evidence
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• I have decided to use my Practical Report as my
  piece of evidence
• as it is my first experience as a teacher in the
  real world.
• I found my two weeks on practical as a sound
  experience of what teaching is all about. It
  confirmed my belief that teaching is the career I
  want to follow.
• I believe that I had a successful two weeks at
  the school I chose to do my practical experience
  with. I was invited back at any time I felt I
  would like to spend time in a classroom or for
  any more practicals that I wish to do at that
  school.

Justification
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• My final KLA observation was on Personal
  Development Health and Physical Education, and
  again this observation was carried out on a
  Kindergarten class at 210 pm. I chose this
  lesson because I had actually read some of the
  text that the teacher used for her lesson and
  felt it was a different and interesting approach.
• The resources and equipment for this lesson was
  hoops outside and worksheets for inside. There
  was only one student group for this observation.
• Classroom structure
• Grouped tables and chairs
• Charts all around the room on healthy eating
• Comprised of boys and girls
• 24 students
• related to.

Evidence
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• Learning outcomes were addressed by the teacher
  modelling and scaffolding
• The importance of warm up exercises
• How to stretch correctly
• Motor Skills
• How to jump, landing correctly on the balls of
  their feet
• Healthy eating
• This was a very interesting lesson, as we have
  spent weeks learning that pedagogy is the art and
  science of teaching. In this lesson I saw the
  term pedagogy role played. The teacher here used
  a book called Ready to use, Fundamental Motor
  Skills Movement Activities for Young Children
  written by Joanne M Landy Keith R Burridge. I
  believe it is important that you choose something
  that will keep the childrens interest and in
  this lesson I believe the teacher has structured
  a program that is of great benefit to the
  children in their learning, but also something
  that they obviously enjoy.

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• You make curriculum decisions to meet learning
  objectives for the day, the unit, the semester
  and the school year. Those decisions must be
  creative and appeal to the learning styles of
  individual students. (Niebrand, Horn, Holmes
  1992, p 102). Here the teacher used terms from
  her book such as, Stand at home, Scrambled eggs,
  Iceberg, Kangaroo hop (words that came from her
  activities book) but words that the children
• In relation to this KLA the teacher has reached
  the suggested outcomes of the syllabus
• MOES1.4 Generates a general awareness of how
  basic movement skills apply in play and other
  introductory movement experiences.
• MOS2.4 Displays a focus on quality of movement in
  applying movement skills to a variety of familiar
  and new situations
• PHES1.2 Displays basic positive health practices
• PHSI.12 Discusses the factors influencing
  personal health choices
• PHS1.12 Recognises that positive health choices
  can promote well being. Syllabus, English K-6,
  1998)

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• I chose this Key Learning Area for my evidence as
  it was a class that seemed to be different from
  the other classes. Different in that the
  children were obviously eager to become involved.
  
• There was no real effort to engage the children
  as they did this by themselves. There was a lot
  of different movements in this class that kept
  the children interested in what they were doing,
  movements with such names as iceberg, kangaroo
  hop, jelly, freeze and a lot of other moves
  with names attached to them.
• The teacher kept complimenting the children on
  how well they remembered the moves and on how
  well behaved they were while they were learning.
• In speaking with the teacher, she did mention to
  me that there was a lot of success with this
  physical education program and obviously was the
  one she preferred also.

Justification
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Assignment 3 - EPT 114

• Forum Posting 3 The Maths Lesson.
• Introduction
• Learning outcomes
• NS2.2 Uses mental and written strategies for
  addition and subtraction involving two-, three-
  and four-digit numbers (Board of Studies,
  Mathematics k-6 Syllabus, p. 48).

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• To get the students engaged and interested I
  would have the students play a game to start
  with. The teacher would explain the game to the
  students and then model it so the students
  understood how they are to play. Word knowledge
  and sentence structure can usually be merged into
  the development of mathematical concepts by the
  use of language arts analogies. (Page, Elkins
  OConner 1978, p.61). This is one way the teacher
  could successfully engage and teach the children
  as she maintains a comfort zone for the third
  class students as they are taken through the
  different stages of the Teaching and Learning
  Cycle. The students can learn quickly and
  understood tasks placed in front of them by also
  doing examples for the students on the blackboard
  and showing them examples of the work that they
  will be expected to know. You make curriculum
  decisions to meet learning objectives for the
  day, the unit, the semester and the school year.

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• Those decisions must be creative and appeal to
  the learning styles of individual students.
  (Niebrand, Horn, Holmes 1992, p 102). I believe
  this myself and hence believe in variety in
  teaching to allow yourself room to move with the
  different abilities of the different
  personalities in the classroom.
• In using the game, the teacher would be assessing
  their prior knowledge, which would be assisting
  her in developing her program to suit the
  students educational needs.

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Main Part

• On gauging the stage that the students are at, I
  would then divide the children into groups to
  attempt the game themselves, wondering around the
  class to assess whether the students were
  grasping the concept and learning from it.
• It is important that the students do experiment
  with hands on stuff and that they use concrete
  materials, which assists the children in seeing
  an outcome in what they are doing. It would also
  be appropriate to send the students back to their
  desks to do their own group work from their books
  as suggested by Miss Smith.

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• At this stage, you would have given yourself the
  opportunity while you were walking around the
  classroom to see who understands the work and who
  does not. As it is easier at times for students
  to learn more from a peer, you could buddy them
  up at their desks with their peers to assist the
  ones that have not grasped it as well. This
  would allow you time to assist children who maybe
  even more behind.

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Conclusion

• In concluding, it would be appropriate to finish
  the class with question and answer time to allow
  yourself to see what the students have learnt and
  if they are progressing as you would hope.
• It could also be a time where the students could
  assess the teaching of the subject and give their
  opinions on what they thought was useful to them
  and what they thought was not of help to them in
  learning the topic.
• It would be important that as a teacher you take
  time to reflect on how you felt the subject was
  covered and how you, especially as a new teacher,
  could improve your lesson.

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Referencing

• Niebrand,C, Horn,E, Holmes,F 2000, The Pocket
  Mentor. A Pearson Education Company Needham
  Heights, MA 02494
• Page,G, Elkins,J, OConnor,B, 1978, Communication
  Through Reading Vol.2 Diverse Needs Creative
  Approaches. Australian Reading Association
• Board of Studies NSW, 1998, Syllabus. Board of
  Studies NSW, Sydney

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Forum Posting 1

• Evaluation of Lesson Observed.
• Maths was observed on a kindergarten class in the
  same classroom as English at 1130 am. I spoke
  to the teacher about her maths lesson at morning
  tea and thought she had some good ideas in
  keeping the students interested long enough to
  teach them what she had planned.
• Learning outcomes were addressed by the teacher
  modelling and scaffolding
• Whole numbers
• Addition
• Subtracting, and
• Patterns

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• The teacher used buttons, table charts, portable
  blackboard, and their number board for her
  resources and equipment for this lesson. The
  students were divided into four different maths
  groups according to their ability.
• During this lesson, the teacher was familiarising
  the children with counting and patterns and in
  doing this used a counting frame made up of 100
  blocks. The children were sitting in four
  separate lines, grouped according to their
  ability. The teacher asked different questions
  of the lines depending on their level.

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• To get the students engaged and interested the
  teacher played Guess the number game? The
  teacher modelled this so the students understood
  how to play. The attention span for this age was
  not great, so after three games were played it
  was time to do something else. The teacher kept
  the students interested by using buttons to play
  games whilst doing their sums word knowledge and
  sentence structure can usually be merged into the
  development of mathematical concepts by the use
  of language arts analogies. (Page, Elkins
  OConner 1978, p.61) I believe that this is how
  the teacher successfully engaged and taught the
  children as she maintained a comfort zone for the
  kindergarten class as they were taken through the
  different stages of the Teaching and Learning
  Cycle. The students learnt quickly and
  understood tasks placed in front of them.

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• I believe the teacher was successful in covering
  her maths lesson with the children. She had such
  a lovely rapport with the children and had put
  great effort into planning what would keep them
  interested. According to research students were
  more likely to participate with people they knew
  well or in supportive situations with clear,
  well-defined tasks. (Groundwater-Smith, Ewing
  Le Cornu 2003 p 124). I believe that children do
  learn better, when they are with someone that
  they are comfortable with. I see this as a
  parent, when your children are uncomfortable with
  something they are not positive and consequently
  will not have a positive attitude to what they
  are learning.

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• In relation to this KLA, the teacher has reached
  the suggested outcomes of the syllabus
• NES1.1 Counts to 30, and orders reads and repeats
  numbers in the range 0-20
• PAES1.1 Recognises describes creates and
  continues repeating patterns and number patterns
  from objects and pictures. (Syllabus, English
  K-6, 1998)
• During my first practical experience, I was
  fortunate enough to experience a different class
  each day. I had kindergarten through to a
  composite year 2/3 all boys class even though I
  went to a co-educational school.

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• The only time I found that most students did not
  achieve the planned learning outcomes was with
  the composite class of year 2/3 all boys. On
  this day, the usual teacher was off sick and a
  casual teacher was called in. Although there was
  work left for the teacher, she was a first year
  out teacher and the class of boys had full
  control over her and not the other way around.
• This was in turn a very valuable experience
  despite the fact that it was a very
  non-productive day.

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• Referencing
• Page,G, Elkins,J, OConnor,B, 1978, Communication
  Through Reading Vol.2 Diverse Needs Creative
  Approaches. Australian Reading Association
• Groundwater-Smith,S, Ewing,R, Le Cornu,R 2003,
  TEACHING challeges and dilemmas. Harcourt
  Australia Pty Ltd
• Board of Studies NSW, 1998, Syllabus. Board of
  Studies NSW, Sydney