Content

Context:

Implementing strategies that are appropriate for the learning environment enhances student engagement and promotes student success towards their learning. It is important that as a middle school teacher, I research concepts and effective strategies that deliver subject content efficiently and appropriately structured. I always ensure before teaching a new content to the students, that I make myself an expert on the topic during my planning and preparing time. By thoroughly understanding the concept, substance and structure of the content, strategies can be considered and implemented accordingly to ensure the curriculum standards are being met.

As teachers, being organised and productive makes it easier to transition between lessons. Ensuring all planning and preparation is completed before the day or lesson arrives, makes it a smooth and sequential transition throughout the day. Additionally, it provides more time for teachers to achieve their goal for the lesson, work with the students and get through all the content that is required and planned. This potentially allows students to stay up to date with the curriculum and not fall behind.

As a Year 5 team, we meet together to plan a term overview. In this overview, explicitly states what topic will be taught in each subject for the term, and what weeks the topics will be covered from. This gives us a timeframe and goal of when to start and complete a unit of work so we can cover all areas of the curriculum adequately throughout the year. Further, it promotes collaborative planning and preparing before the term commences. This allows us as a team, to share resources and ensure all Year 5 students across the school are being taught the same topics at the same time.

Annotation/Action:

The Department of Education have recently published unit plans for Maths, English, Science and HASS. When planning and structuring my lesson plans, I ensure to follow the DfE unit plans and tweak it by adding in my own question time, reflections and deeper activities. This has allowed for effective formative and summative tasks to be implemented to assess students appropriately. I have created my own slides and structured it in a way that I believe best fits for the students in my class, sequentially providing them with opportunities to practice new concepts being taught. Additionally, as a Year 5 staff we structured our year and write overviews to sequence topics for each subject accordingly. This ensures that we tick off the curriculum areas for the year and the students are taught the content for each subject.

Results:

Students have engaged well with the DfE unit plans, however there wasn't much opportunity for practice for particular concepts being taught, with Year 5 students, it was needed. Therefore that is why I tweaked some unit plans to add in some opportunities to develop in topics. I found that the unit plans were longer than 5 weeks and it was difficult to get through, therefore restructuring was needed to ensure the basics of the specific content was taught in detail. I also found some activities and assessments were too easy for students and challenges weren't provided. Alongside differentiating for different abilities. I believe the Year 5 teachers working together to create a sequenced and well flowed year worked well, and we were making sure all Year 5 students were learning the curriculum topics at the same point in time.

Evaluation:

I believe that the some of the DfE unit plans have been great and students have been extremely engaged with the activities set for them. However, I do not believe the full units provide enough opportunity for students to be challenged, practice difficult concepts and differentiate for students with needs. I have found that sequencing the year and planning alongside other teachers has been a great way to work collaboratively and provide students with the best possible learning.

Standards:

2.1 Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area

2.2 Content selection and organisation

2.3 Curriculum, assessment and reporting

2.5 Literacy and numeracy strategies

3.1 Establish challenging learning goals

3.2 Plan, structure and sequence learning programs

3.3 Use teaching strategies

3.4 Select and use resources

3.6 Evaluate and improve teaching programs

4.1 Support student participation

4.2 Manage classroom activities