1.1 Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students
1.2 Understand how students learn
I completed a placement in a Year 5 class with 24 students in a Metropolitan Brisbane area. During this placement, I planned for, taught, and assessed the class in a unit of mathematics focusing on measuring length and area. Within this class, 1 student had anxiety and needed regular check ins, 1 student had ADHD and needed regular movement breaks and clear transitions, 1 student was EALD, 2 students needed regular reminders to remain on task and 1 student needed clear transitions. This experience demonstrates my competence in knowing the students and how they learn, meeting the APST Standard 1 with a particular focus on APST 1.1 and 1.2. To do this, I developed a comprehensive class profile (Artefact 1), recording students’ literacy, numeracy, digital literacy, and personal and social capabilities.
To develop this class profile, my mentor provided me with up-to-date data of students’ recent literacy and numeracy results. Furthermore, in my first week I discussed with my mentor teacher the students personal and social capabilities but also made my own observations, seeing how students worked in a group and individually in the classroom. On the first day, I ran an activity (Artefact 2) which allowed the students to get to know me and for me to get to know the students. Hattie (2017) emphasises that having a strong teacher-student relationship accelerates student learning. This activity also allowed me to observe students in a whole-class setting. Once the class profile was complete in my first week, I was able to use it to understand the unique characteristics of each student (APST 1.1) and understand how students learn (APST 1.2). By using this class profile for my future teaching in my placement, I referred to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943) as I was ensuring that students’ psychological needs are met before focusing on academic or self-fulfilment needs.
As a result of developing a class profile, understanding how the students learn in this class (APST 1.1, 1.2) and using Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs (1943); I was able to engage students in the mathematics unit as their needs were addressed. My mentor teacher provided me with feedback throughout my placement and Artefact 3 is an example of one lesson of feedback. They noticed I “checked in with students individually” which included the student with anxiety. Additionally, they acknowledged I “provided visual and verbal time reminders and reminded students of support tools available”, which was particularly targeted for the EALD student to receive visual aids and language support tools. Finally, my mentor teacher stated I “verbally restated behaviour expectations, gave parallel acknowledgement, calmy redirected off task behaviour, and gave choices to students who weren’t participating (Artefact 3). This was not only to support all students but particularly the students who needed clear transitions, including the student with ADHD.
