Personal Goals Heading Into Week Five

After completing my first week of full control, I have set three main goals in my teaching to focus on for this week.

Firstly, I aim to include roles within group activities. I believe strongly in collaborative group work and have begun including this in every learning area for discussions, inquiry, and formative assessment. I have discovered that especially in discussions, it is always the same students contributing ideas and that I do too much of the talking. I want them to initiate these discussions and feel confident in contributing. Through assigning roles, every student will have a responsibility within the group. It will be interesting to see how these discussions progress throughout the week, and I will reflect each day on how this strategy affects engagement and achievement.

Secondly, I want to focus on having strong conclusions at the end of each lesson. Assessment is one of my overall goals this practicum; reflective activities at the end of each lesson will provide an insight into students' views on their learning and will assist formative assessment. There will be a focus on peer and self-assessment. Learning intentions are expressed in a questions form, so at the end of lessons students will reflect on this question and answer as much as they can. They will discuss their learning with peers, assess each other's learning, and have specific roles in groups for what aspect of the learning they will assess for each group member (ie in writing one will edit language, another paragraphs etc). I often forget about the end of lessons and run out of time, this week I will aim to use the last 10mins for reflection.

Thirdly, I need to further progress towards my behaviour management goal. Some students can be quite disruptive and detract from other students' learning. I need to trial a few different strategies to see if I can grasp their engagement for longer periods of time. Enhancing roles within groups and giving them specific responsibilities may support this. I also need to remember to focus on the positive behaviours. If someone is being disruptive, do not let that become the spotlight. Quietly ask them to bring their work and sit next to me (if working with a group) or give them choice to have 'think' time about their actions and choose to come back and participate in the learning. This way I can ensure behaviours are managed without detracting from the learning.

I will reflect on these goals daily and at the end of the week assess how beneficial they have been, and whether it has improved my teaching practice to better suit the needs of my students.