2.1 Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area
Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the concepts, substance and structure of the content and teaching strategies of the teaching area.
2.2 Content selection and organisation
Organise content into an effective learning and teaching sequence.
2.3 Curriculum, assessment and reporting
Use curriculum, assessment and reporting knowledge to design learning sequences and lesson plans.
During a five-week preservice teacher placement at a low socioeconomic primary school, I was tasked with planning and teaching a mathematics unit on addition and sharing to a prep class. The class included a large number of EAL/D students and students receiving academic intervention, as well as one student on a personalised learning plan and reduced attendance. The students ranged in numeracy abilities and prior knowledge from a student who was working on recognising and counting numbers to 5 to a student who could recognise and count to 50 and was working on partitioning. During my initial data gathering stage, I identified that many of the students had gaps in their knowledge and understanding of the counting principles, specifically “count to and from 20, moving from any starting point” (ACARA, 2018). As this is a foundational skill and pre-requisite to addition, it was important to address this before moving on to the intended teaching unit (Reys et al., 2012).
Drawing on my mathematical content knowledge and knowledge of content-specific teaching strategies (APST 2.1), I planned a sequence of lessons and assessment tasks (APST 2.2) that focused on the language, processes and principles of counting and would address the gaps in the students’ knowledge to prepare them for learning about addition and sharing (Artefact 2.1). Using a backward-mapping approach, I first developed an assessment task and rubric (APST 2.3) that would indicate if the students had achieved the year level achievement standard. Following this step, I then developed a sequence of lessons that aligned with the relevant content descriptor and would scaffold the students towards success. Each of the lessons included elements of language, manipulatives and symbols as this has been shown to help young children make connections between concrete knowledge and abstract understanding (Irons & Irons, 1989). I also used a number of High Impact Teaching Strategies [HITS] (Victorian Department of Education and Training, 2020) including setting goals, structured lessons, explicit teaching and collaborative learning, as well as the gradual release of responsibility model [GRR] (Fisher & Frey, 2013) to ensure that students were always linking their prior knowledge and experiences to the new learning (Reys et al., 2012).
As a result of these actions, the majority of the class met the achievement standard of counting to twenty from any starting point, with six students achieving above the standard.
