Standard 1 further development
I know I need further development in Standard 1: Know your students and how they learn, Focus area 1.3: Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds (AITSL, 2014). I do not possess any teaching strategies to support these students. I have also had limited exposure to people from these backgrounds in my life.
Focus area 1.4: Strategies for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander students (AITSL, 2014) is another area within this standard that I will need further development. Like Focus Area 1.3, I have had little to no interaction with Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander peoples and I feel I know very little about their culture and linguistic backgrounds.
For these two focus areas, I will need to look for professional development courses that look into culture, language, diversity and teaching strategies. I have created an account with the NSW Department of Education MyPL site for courses that align with the standards. For Focus area 1.3, I found a course that is designed to give teachers knowledge and resources to give specific learning needs for students with speech impediments. The course is called Speech at BNPS. The course goes for two hours and aligns with standards 1.3, 6.2 and 7.4 (NSW Department of Education, n.d.). I think this will be a good course for me as I will be provided with strategies to help students with speech impediments and communication disorders and resources for assessment and interventions.
For Focus area 1.4, three modules are available from Respect, Relationships, Reconciliation for pre-service teachers. Module two looks at teaching Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander students and includes topics such as "Supportive Classrooms" and "Inclusive Pedagogies" (Respect, Relationships, Reconciliation, n.d.). I feel I would benefit from this course greatly as I know I do not know enough about Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander values and culture. I intend on doing this course before I undertake my second year practicum. While this is not a 'live' professional development course, I believe I will benefit from this greatly and feel more confident going into other 'live' courses in this field held by The Department of Education and other professional development providers.
Standard 3 further development
I am aware of my lack of knowledge in Standard 3: Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning, Focus area 3.2: Plan, structure and sequence learning programs (AITSL, 2014). As I have not yet had any experience in planning lessons, I do not know what this entails. When I start my second year subjects, my knowledge on how to create lesson plans will expand and I expect my learning to increase in this area as my education continues. I am a high achiever and I want the very best lessons for my students. For this to happen, I will require further learning in this area.
I found a course on the NSW Department of Education site for TSA courses at the proficient level of the AITSL standards. The course is called Designing quality lessons (Course code: RG00317) and will provide me with further knowledge on lesson structuring to achieve different learning goals, the ability to assess students using questioning and peer assessment to understand their learning needs, and to create lessons with explicit learning intentions and rubrics (NSW Department of Education, 2019). As this course is designed for accredited teachers, I was unable to login further for details on how long and where this course is run.
Effective lesson planning is extremely important and as stated by Walker (in Gobby & Walker, 2017, p. 456), involves many decisions including content selection, tasks, instruction, the learning environment, and is a core task of teaching. This is one part of my career as a teacher I want to excel in and I feel regular quality professional development courses will be beneficial to me.
Standard 4 further development
While I am already teaching Primary Ethics in schools and need a certain level of behaviour management within those lessons, I feel I will benefit from more training in this area. Standard 4: Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments, Focus area 4.3: Manage challenging behaviour, requires me to have "knowledge of practical approaches to manage challenging behaviour" (AITSL, 2014). Although I know strategies that work for lessons that are 30 minutes long, I want to learn more to be able to manage challenging behaviour for a full day of teaching.
The Association of Independent Schools of NSW: Empowering Independent Education (ais NSW) hold many courses that are run throughout the year. Growing Early Career Teachers K-12: Embedding Best Practice is a course designed for early career teachers and provides techniques and strategies to use in the classroom to promote student engagement, academic growth and wellbeing. This year the course ran over three sessions in Sydney and was held between 9am and 3:30pm. This course will be beneficial for me as it also aligns with the following AITSL standards, 3.2, 6.1, 6.3 and 7.2.
I feel behaviour management is extremely important to get right and Churchill et al. (2019, p. 371) state that a well-functioning classroom requires a clear understanding of behaviour expectations by the students. I believe keeping up to date with current strategies in behaviour management can help me to maintain a classroom that is happy and engaged with little distractions.