Placement Reflection

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My first placement was undertaken at Gungahlin College in Canberra, from February 20th until 3rd April 2017. This college teaches years 11 and 12 Drama and Live Production units. I observed and taught the Dramatic Elements and Australian Theatre courses under the supervision of Maria Stewart (Head of Arts).

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My goals for this placement were

• By the end of my placement I will know and understand the content required from the ACT BSSS for Drama for the following units; Dramatic Exploration and Australian Theatre and be able to apply this to my lesson plans.

• By the end of my placement I will have learned how to translate the lesson plan into a successful lesson. By incorporating a differentiating variety of teaching strategies in all classes. Exploring how to combine the theory students must learn with meaningful experiential activities.

• By week 3 I will be engaging positively with teaching staff at Gungahlin College in order to improve my understanding of the structure of the school and the specific teaching goals of the school.

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My second placement was undertaken at Radford College in Canberra from the 14th August until 22nd September 2017. It is an Anglican School that goes from Pre-School to Year 12. During my time at Radford I observed and taught lessons for Years 7 through to 12, under the supervision of Sally Hendrie (Head of Performing Arts) and Nick Akhurst (Head of Co-Curricular Arts).

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My goals for this placement were;

• Professional Practice Goal: Standard 2.6 -  Information and Communication Technology (ICT). To incorporate the use of ICT in my lessons and learning activities by the end of my placement

• Professional Knowledge Goal: Standard 4.3 Manage challenging behaviour. By the end of my placement I will be able to articulate my teaching philosophy and how it links to my classroom management style.

• Professional Engagement Goal: Standard 7.3 and 7.4 – Engage Professionally with Colleagues, Parents/Carers and the Community. To connect and learn about the school community outside of the Drama department by the middle of my placement.

 

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Professional Knowledge

 Standard 1. Know Students and How They Learn.

In the subject Pedagogies of Diverse Classrooms (EEP424) I learned more about differentiation in the drama classroom. I have demonstrated this in class during my time at Radford College, particularly in the year 8 classes, I put together a lesson on improvisation and theatre sports. This lesson was designed to teach students how to accept an offer and build on it, without creating a roadblock for the class. I held a discussion about improvisation to assess students’ prior knowledge and then moved into activities. I soon found that some students required more assistance to successfully work in their groups to form ideas. It was important to use heterogeneous grouping so that students themselves could offer peer support to each other. To understand the level of support a student requires we must use actively monitor the academic output using clear data, taking into consideration cultural effects and behavioural issues that are evident to improve that student’s outcomes.  In class I was constantly monitoring student’s collaboration and communication skills and making sure that those who required my assistance had a differentiate instruction to assist them further. Some strategies that I used were modelling, giving examples and re-communicating the task with additional information. Another strategy that I found useful was to select a group who were excelling and using them to illustrate to the rest of the class my expectation of the task at the mid-point. The allowed students to see how other groups had approached the task and enabled them to model their response on their peer’s work. We discussed this aspect of sharing work many times in the classroom, as I drama we take ideas and inspiration from all things around us.  As stated by my supervising Teacher Sally Hendrie “Sian is able to structure collaborative task to facilitate effective learning for all of her students, effectively pairing students of differing intellectual and emotional abilities to promote peer teaching” I have successfully incorporated differentiation into my teaching and learning planning process.

 

Standard 2. Know the Content and How to Teach it.

The learning I undertook in my curriculum method subjects (EML443 and EML444) was highly valuable. I know understand how to take my previous drama knowledge and experience and to apply it to the Australian Curriculum content (ACARA), Board of Studies NSW and the ACT Board of Senior Secondary Studies (ACT BSSS). The most valuable aspect that I learnt thought out my curriculum method subjects is about Drama being an experiential subject, a quote about learning that has influenced my thinking since I began my course is that “education in order to accomplish its ends both for the individual learner and for society must be based upon experience” Dewey 1938 as cited in Jarvis, 2006, p. 184). Therefore, I believe that in Drama we can explore many topics and issues that are relevant to the students as long we link that content back to the Elements of Drama.  Student development has been a big learning curve for me during my studies, I know have found a way to apply my knowledge in the planning process.

When I discovered The Gradual Release Model, I was able incorporate this into my lesson plans. During my placement Radford College incorporated this within my lessons, you can see how the structure of the tasks are designed in an order that requires less and less teacher directed learning and more student led learning. To be able to use this effectively you must know the topic you are covering well enough and break it up in a scaffolded program that allows students to build on their knowledge. In this instance I begin with a warm up activity that will energise the class and then move onto an individual activity where we split the class on two. One half will participate, the other will observe and vice versa. This meant that as a teacher I can lead the class through the activity and also ask questions to the audience about what they can see. Moving forwards, we then focus on some paired work in which students practice clarity, consistency and continuity. I then choose to break up the lesson with a quick game of lemonade which will do two things, re-energise the class and provide them with a chance to incorporate all three skills together. After this I formed groups and give them a scenario to create a short-improvised piece of work using the three C’s and this was used as formative assessment to decide if we needed to spend more time on Mime in the next lesson.

 

Professional Practice

Standard 3. Plan for and Implement Effective Teaching and Learning.

To build my planning skills during this second placement I spent some time revisiting information about the teaching and learning cycle. As stated by NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) there is a cycle and during each process the needs of students must be considered. The evaluation process is highly important, especially for me as a new teacher. This step will be the most important as it will guide my teaching forwards to the next phase. By taking the time to review the planning, teaching and learning that has happened in the classroom you can informed your future work. I used this process during both of my placements and I found that looking back on these I can now improve and amend the lessons and units for the next time I use them.  In the subject Successful Teaching (EED408) we learned about the principles of planning and how backwards design is the more effective way to plan lessons and units of work. This process enables you to start with the big idea that you want students to understand and then expertly link the steps required to get there into each proceeding lesson.   In the year 7 classes I used a short discussion time at the end of each lesson in which I incorporated questioning to assess whether the students could recognise, apply and give feedback about each element of drama we were exploring. This time was important for me to discover if the concepts taught had been understood, such as focus. Could students recognise when focus was being used. Correctly or incorrectly by their peers, where students able to apply their knowledge of focus to their own work and then finally could they give suggestions to peers for when to use more focus in their work. By understanding how well the content has been absorbed during the lesson allow myself to then move students to the next step in the unit, and if necessary to go back to the drawing board and plan a lesson that tackles the content in a different way.

 

Standard 4. Create and Maintain Supportive and Safe Learning Environments.

The Subject Managing the Classroom Environment (EEA406) has been key in my learning for this aspect. In this subject we were given chance to consider our teaching philosophy and how we can incorporate this into a theory of classroom management. I believe my role as a teacher in the classroom is to facilitate the leaning of the students. I provide resources, activities and strategies to create an experience. This way of thinking is a Collaborative Learning Theory and aligns well with a Humanist approach to Classroom Management. The classroom is a community that must be respected and engaged with. Behavioural issues tend to occur less when students are engaged and for this to occur student needs must be met (Porter, 2016, p. 130). This approach is working well in the classroom for me as you can see from the Feedback from Sally Hendrie. These skills where particularly important to build in my second year 8 class, these students started their drama experience with me and I had the chance to take the introductory lessons with them. I focused in three skills in the beginning lessons with the class; collaboration, communication and community. We spent the first lesson discussing why we learn drama and the way we work in the drama classroom. We built rules together as a class and talked about respect and how we would show that to each other. I included some practical excersize where the whole class had to work together and create letters on the floor, when then moved into creating objects with our bodies in smaller groups. These activities formed an assessment of the students’ performance skills and enable me to pinpoint where to focus the learning for the rest of the unit. To finish this lesson the student wrote a letter to me and had to tell me three things about themselves and how they feel about drama. This not only gave me an insight into their personalities it also formed a literacy assessment for each student so that I knew what level their written skills were sitting at.

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Standard 5. Assess, Provide Feedback and Report of Student Learning

During my time on both placements I was able to be involved in the assessment process. This is because assessment should be incorporated actively into the teaching and learning activities (Victorian Government, n.d., para. 10-19). My learning in the subject Assessment and Reporting (EEE405) provided me with a theoretical background for the process of assessment and helped me to understand the need for both formative and summative assessment in the classroom. Formative assessment should be used during the learning process, with peer feedback, self-reflection and teacher feedback, so that the student guides their path of learning and reduce the gaps in their knowledge. Whereas summative assessment should take place after the learning has occurred to inform future teaching and learning, or as a diagnostic element early on in the unit.  Teacher feedback must be specific and provided immediately, therefore in my teaching on both of my placements I engage in questioning sessions after any practical work to involve the whole class in feedback session where you can explicitly model and teach the process of providing feedback.  An example of formal feedback I provided after an in-class assessment. This student had performed a summative assessment at the end of a unit of work about Family. In the feedback I have aimed to identify strengths and weaknesses and to help provide that path for future learning by providing ways for the student to move from where they are now to the next grade up.

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Standard 6. Engage in Professional Learning

I have continued to undertake professional learning on my placement’s and beyond. During my first placement I attended weekly Professional Learning sessions with my Supervising Teacher, Maria Stewart. During my second placement I attended fortnightly staff meeting with Sally Hendrie, we listened to talks about giving students more autonomy in the classroom, a session on Microsoft One Note and a really informative session about Mental Health and Suicide in schools. This last session was very useful to me as unfortunately I experienced that very situation occur at Gungahlin College during my first placement. It was useful to hear about the correct language to use and how to discuss such an event with students in the classroom. Outside of school I have continued to be involved with ACTDA, the ACT Drama Association. I lucky enough to attend the Drama Symposium held in Canberra in collaboration with Drama Australia and ACTDA on 29-30 September 2017. During this event there were some very interesting speakers, the presentation I connected with most was a paper on Working with Indigenous Plays in the Classroom, A Comparative School Study. Two schools in Melbourne undertook the challenge to perform the same Indigenous play, ‘Children of the Black Skirt’ Both schools were form opposite ends of the socio-economic spectrum and had students from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. It was great to see how they both addressed the stereotyping and moral issues and fears associated with performing such plays, with such success. They are now building guidelines for teachers with the help of Drama Australia.

 

Professional Engagement

Standard 7. Engage Professionally with Colleagues, Parents/Carers and the Community.

In my first placement I was unable to engage with Parents/Carers as there was not a chance during my time at Gungahlin College. At Radford Collage on my second placement I was able to attend Parent Teacher night with Sally Hendrie. This was a chance to engage with parents and to observe Sally’s process in planning with such an event. There was only 5 minutes allotted for each visit, and a digital timer was up on the walls in the hall. The desks were setup with teachers on one side and parents on the other. It didn’t seem like a lot of time to fully discuss each child and enable to flowing conversation, unfortunately I soon saw that for the year 7 and 8 students there wasn’t as much interest from the parents. At this level it is a compulsory subject and there were a lot of parents and students who had declared that drama wasn’t for them. Sally and I were discussing the need for advocacy for the arts and how to use this time with parents to show them what their children had done. She cleverly had her One Note book open with videos of in class performances of students. This meant parents could actually view the work their child had done, that otherwise would had disappeared into records never to been seen again. It was positive to see reactions and disbelief that the shy child was fully engaged in the task and seemingly enjoying themselves. I have noted down these techniques as drama is such a practical subject why don’t you show parents the work and let them see a child perhaps unknown potential.

 

 

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