My Teaching Experience At Woolooware Public Schools

Reflection on our teaching experiences makes us consider our beliefs, values and knowledge and allows us to re-evaluate and improve our teaching practices. According to Yoo (2001) reflecting provides the opportunities for self-evaluation, helps teachers develop their personal teaching values and strategies and encourages teachers to observe students carefully to develop individualised instruction. My professional teaching experience took place at Woolooware Public School, Sydney, New South Wales. Woolooware Public School is a medium sized school with approximately 444 students (My School, 2014). The allocated class - 3M consisted of 30 students, 12 female and 18 male students. Woolooware Public School consists of students of varying backgrounds

It became very obvious that students did not respond well to the teacher yelling to gain their attention and to get them back on task. I believe it is imperative to build good rapport with students so I made a conscious effort not to yell at the students throughout my placement which helped build a positive and caring learning environment. Grossman (2003) describes avoiding behavioural problems as one of the key factors to consider when approaching classroom management. To avoid behaviour problems during lessons, students were asked to identify the classroom rules: listen, try your best, do as the teacher asks, put your hand up and wait and be in seat and on task. This approach reinforced the rules and also informed students of the appropriate behaviours expected. The mentor teacher used numerous strategies to keep students on task. Rewarding students with ‘house points’ for appropriate behaviour and verbally acknowledging how well certain students were working, was an effective strategy to keep students on task when they were completing individual work. Putting the names of student on the whiteboard who were not on task and keeping those students in at lunch for not completing their work was another strategy

I also began to implement a few of my own ideas to get students back on task. In one situation when students were working at their desks and showed signs of going off task, I decided to whisper “Mrs Whitbread says, do you work, pass it on.” This approach was effective in that particular situation as students quickly quietened because they were curious to know what the whispering was about. In most lessons I used the “online stopwatch” (Timer, 2014). This provided students with visual display on the IWB to indicate to students how much time they had left to complete the activity. I believe this helped students to stay on task as they knew exactly how long they had left to complete the activity.

Pedagogical Reflection–Teaching strategies: What teaching strategies and resources can be incorporated daily to enhance student