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.
As a preservice teacher I was placed within a year one class with 26 students aged between six and eight years of age. The class consisted of a majority of boys, one student diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), two students who are Indigenous, four students were below year level while one student was above year level academically. While on placement I was required to organise content for an English unit of work to ensure an effective teaching and learning sequence was completed and practical.
Before I could implement any teaching, I had to organise a sequence of learning, this was demonstrated through a unit plan. (APST 2.2, 2.3) This unit plan had to consist of multiple lessons that followed on from one to another while overlapping, ensuring that all content required by the Australian Curriculum for year one English was covered such as They describe characters, settings and events in different types of literature.; They recall key ideas and recognise literal and implied meaning in texts.; They create texts that show understanding of the connection between writing, speech and images.; They accurately spell high-frequency words and words with regular spelling patterns. They use capital letters and full stops and form all upper- and lower-case letters correctly. (Australian Curriculum , 2018)
Before beginning this task, I had to follow the process of assessing what the students already knew. Through the planning and implementation of a diagnostic assessment, I was able to collect what prior knowledge the students had on the topic before beginning.
After assessing the diagnostic task, I was able to ensure I covered all requirements of the unit. This was done by backwards mapping after creating the assessment task. Using the curriculum, assessment examples and the reporting style of the school, I began by creating the assessment task that covered the English requirements that students are expected to know by the end of year one. After completing this, I began to map out the lessons using lesson plans to ensure all content was covered in depth. This allowed me to form a sequence of learning that covered all learning needs.
After completing the unit plan, my mentor teacher assessed the sequence of learning and provided any feedback or changes that she thought would benefit the student’s education. These were minimal and I was permitted to begin the implementation and teaching of this unit plan. As I progressed along with the lessons, it was observed that the students were able to easily follow the lessons and continued to grow their knowledge and confidence. At the end of the sequence of learning the student completed their assessment task, as the students all passed this displayed the effective of organising an effective learning sequence.
