TEP387 CURRICULUM/INSTRUCTION IN SECONDARY SCHOOL I Lecture Notes
LECTURE 1: OVERVIEW
Structure and Resources- Curriculum and lesson planning
- Building literacy skills and teaching reading - Reflective practice
- Questioning
- Critical and creative thinking - Numeracy across the curriculum - Ethics and legal issues in teaching
- Parents and caregivers - what do parents want?
Microteaching
- Plan a 10min lesson
- Present your lesson to a small group of students
- Use the reflection template to write a self-reflection on lesson
- Use the recording of your lesson, the literature on effective teaching, your own reflection and peer feedback from your peers to write a 1500 word critical reflection on your own professional practice Context for a secondary teacher
- Professional Teaching Standards - AITSL - NSW Curriculum - NESA
- National Curriculum
- Department/Sector Requirements and Policy e.g. Department of Education - Australian Curriculum - ACARA
- State and Territory Curriculum and school authorities are responsible for the implementation of the Australian Curriculum in their schools
Cross Curriculum Priorities and General Capabilities - Cross curriculum:
o Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures o Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia
o Sustainability
- Australian Curriculum includes 7 general capabilities:
o Literacy, Numeracy, ICT capability o Critical and creative thinking o Personal and social capability o Ethical understanding
o Intercultural understanding
LECTURE 2: LESSON AND UNIT PLANNING - Meeting Diverse Student Needs
TEP387 CURRICULUM/INSTRUCTION IN SECONDARY SCHOOL I Lecture Notes
Why plan lessons?
- Student learning = purposeful, effective, efficient
- Take account of needs of individual students - anticipate difficulties
- Teacher confidence that you do understand the content that you’re teaching - Anticipate student questions and misconceptions
- Imaginative planning ensures lessons are motivating, interesting and relevant o Quality teaching - minimising behaviour problems
- Detail unit plans = clear intentions to others and highlight ways of achieving outcomes How do you plan a unit of work?
- Each subject area and teacher has different planning styles/process - Outcomes = essential signposts for designing units
- Students minds are not blank slates
- Students = diverse backgrounds with different learning experiences/styles/abilities/interests - Assessment = central to planning process - built into unit
- Quality teaching matters
Curriculum - based on Outcomes Based Education (OBE) - Basic Assumptions of OBE:
o All students can learn and success - not at the same time or in the same way o Successful learning = more successful learning
§ Implications: first assessment task must build up confidence
o Schools/teachers control conditions that determines student success in school learning
§ Quality of teacher = most important Lesson Planning: first steps
- The year group scope/sequences
o What is the class up to? What work came previously? What is next?
- Learning and Teaching program for more detailed info on L and T activities o How many weeks do I have to cover topics?
TEP387 CURRICULUM/INSTRUCTION IN SECONDARY SCHOOL I Lecture Notes
1. Select a topic area:
a. Why am I teaching this?
b. Why does this topic need to be taught now?
c. How does this topic relate to other topics in the course?
- Teachers need sound knowledge of key concepts/theories
- Sound content knowledge = necessary, not sufficient for effective teaching - Become an expert in your topic
2. W hat do the students already know?
a. Why care about student’s existing ideas?
- Students minds are not blank slates - popular culture, personal theories - Students bring complex, sometimes incorrect prior knowledge to learning
- “Understanding any complex subject requires not simply teaching new knowledge but diagnosing, capitalising and when necessary, changing/challenging student’s conceptions”
(Elmore, 1992:45)
- Students learn by relating their existing knowledge to new ideas presented by the teacher 3. Decide on student learning outcom es
a. What specific things so you want students to know and be able to do as a result of learning?
- Types of outcomes: Syllabus, unit, lesson (specific)
- Outcomes should be considered before selecting teaching strategies or assessment 4. Indicators and assessm ent
a. How will I know that students have achieved these outcomes?
- Indicators = evidence that students have met the outcomes - 3 forms of assessment are needed:
o Diagnostic - finding out what students already know (existing knowledge) o Assessment for learning - forms part of learning process
o Assessment of learning - measuring what students know and can do at the end 5. Consider Constraints
a. Is this a constraint imposed by the system or did I create it myself?
- Real - total time you have, subjects students must study, how you must report on student achievement
- Warning - many time and resource constrains = self-imposed o None of the above are excuses for not teaching well
o Overcome constrains by thinking resourcefully and working imaginatively 6. Select and organise unit content
a. What is the core content?
b. What understanding will students demonstrate by learning this content?
c. What are the fundamental concepts and principles?
d. Why are these concepts and principles regarded as fundamental?
e. What will be the consequence of not understanding these things?
f. Are there biases in this content?
g. What are student’s common misconceptions regarding these concepts and principles?
- Unit content is the substance that students deal with to achieve unit outcomes - Don’t select content because it looks interesting or is in the textbook
7. Select teaching strategies
a. What specific teaching techniques will encourage and support the learning described by the outcomes?
b. What analogies, demonstrations and representations of concepts are most effective in addressing common misconceptions in this topic area?
- Learning is most effective when students are given the opportunity and time to construct their own understanding
- Learning is a social/cultural experience so create opportunities for appropriate interaction between students
8. Reflection and Evaluation
TEP387 CURRICULUM/INSTRUCTION IN SECONDARY SCHOOL I Lecture Notes
a. What assumptions did I make about the students/teaching environment/own skills when I planned this unit of work? Were these assumptions correct?
b. Did students achieve the outcomes? Why/Why not?
c. Were the activities engaging and focussed on the fundamental concepts and principles in this topic?
d. Does this unit encourage depth of understanding or simply the recall of facts?
e. What needs to be done to ensure that the outcomes are reflected in the activities and assessment tasks?
f. Were the tasks authentic and made significant to the students?
g. What does the assessment data and feedback from the students suggest about future changes to the unit?
Summary
- Outcomes = key - work backwards from what you want students to know/be able to do - Build on students’ existing knowledge - ask experienced teachers what students find difficult - Work from the assumption that all students can learn
- Important: successful learning = further + more successful learning
LECTURE 3: REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
Key Idea- Avoid the routine trap
- Don’t let assumptions, pre-existing habits or expectations of system drive actions Aim of reflective thinking
- Identify how assumptions, thinking processes, actions and emotions influence student learning - Teacher’s responsibility to:
o Reflect on what we think and do
o Ensure teaching is effective and defensible What is reflective thinking?
- How can I improve from past experiences?
- Think critically about teaching practices, accept what happens in classroom à questions/changed - Theory: The way we see events in the classroom (interpret them) and react to them will on will be
filtered by the frames through which we view these events - Schon 1983
