In this course, I was introduced to theories for teaching and managing diverse learners at the Secondary Level. As learners have different needs and abilities across different stages of their development, teachers must use different classroom management skills and pedagogical approaches to effectively accommodate students’ learning needs and establish a positive classroom culture. I learnt about the importance of implementing rules and routines, reflected on my teacher authority bases (which I reckon to be a mix of referent and legitimate authority), organising the classroom environment as well as the whole school approach to managing students’ behaviour. What I felt most useful was learning about proactive and remedial intervention skills, how they need to be planned beforehand and meted out in increasing order of severity, and communicated to students such that there is an agreement. I also found it refreshing to learn about the diverse needs of students beyond those I am familiar with, such as in giftedness, attention seeking behaviour vs ADHD.

For my individual assignment, I decided to reflect on my first mainstream teaching experience when I was on my School Attachment Programme. I thought about the two key classroom management issues I had faced at that time, and how I would use this new knowledge of mine to tackle the issues. These were via the authority bases used, physical learning environment and intervention strategies. For the group assignment, we looked at a clip which showed a teaching segment and highlighted strategies we felt were effective and others that were not. We then suggested some appropriate intervention strategies the teacher could take, as well as improvements the teacher could make in terms of professional behaviour, to improve the classroom management and students’ learning experience.