Professional Reflections

Year 9 History With my History class, I was given more structure to the information I had to present to the students. However, I was given free reign on how I chose to present it. With this freedom, I thought it would be a good opportunity to mix up my instructional activities to cater to the different learner profiles in the classroom. The first two and a half weeks of the unit involved a variety of activities including a slideshow presentation, independent worksheets, independent and group reading, viewing a documentary, a mapping exercise using older technology and a role-play activity. The mapping and role-play activities were particularly effective and went extremely well considering they were labeled as risks prior to commencement. Many students noted that it was their favourite part of their time with me as their teacher. The assessment task to finish this unit was also differentiated according to learner interest. Over the course of the unit, the students learned about several famous explorers. Their task was to make a wanted poster for their favourite explorer. An example can be seen in Figure 1. As can be seen in the image, this student found Christopher Columbus the most interesting of the Explorers we focused on during the unit. One student in the class has Autism and other learning difficulties. Therefore the task was much beyond his individual level of readiness. To combat this, I designed a proforma poster for him to use. This meant that he had a differentiated task where he still had to find the information, but it would be much more easy for him to organise. The proforma for his assignment can be seen in the Appendix. Like in PE, I thought that the differentiating I implemented had a positive impact on the students. I have been told it is rare for the student with Autism to hand up an assessment piece, and he did well, which is a reflection on what he can do with a task he understands properly.

Figure 1: Example of Wanted Poster in Year 9 History

Appendix: Wanted Poster

Find an image of your explorer and replace the picture above.

In this section write why the explorer is wanted, when they committed the crime, and where they can be found.