Standard 2.1 - Content and Teaching Strategies of the Teaching Area
Proficient Apply knowledge of the content and teaching strategies of the teaching area to develop engaging teaching activities.
Throughout my teaching career I have used my knowledge of curriculum content and teaching strategies gained from my university degree, professional development, classroom experience and professional discussions with my colleagues to develop engaging activities throughout my units of work. While teaching Mathematics in a Reception class I was planning a unit of work to cover the topic of location and transformation, which at this level requires students to use language to describe location.
During a school professional development training on, Transforming Tasks, I had the opportunity to collaborate with my colleagues (all teachers of Reception) on this aspect of the Mathematics curriculum. During this collaboration we discussed different ways we could engage students with the content and create an engaging assessment task that provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the language of location.
From this collaboration I planned a unit of work that included the transformed task and a number of the discussed engagement activities. By using a number of different teaching strategies I have been able to develop a 2 week unit that allows students to engage with the content through a number of engaging activities. An annotated copy of my unit plan can be found below.
Some of the engagement activities included in the unit and an explanation of the activity can be found in the table below.
During units of work I also use a range of other teaching and engagement strategies. The include but are not limited to: - Gallery walk – Allow students time to walk around the classroom to view others work and have a small brain break. - Brain Breaks – Allow students to have time to move. This may include GoNoodle, simple movement routines etc. - Think-Pair-Share – Ask students questions and they think about it by themselves, then share it with a partner and then they have the opportunity to share with the class. - Use of Visuals and audio - I often use videos or songs that reinforce the content being taught.