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School of Education WESTERN SYDNEY

UNIVERSITY
102605 Secondary PP Community Engagement
Self Reflection Form

Pre-service Teacher Details

Pre-service Teacher Name: Pre-service Teacher ID:
Nitish Navitesh Prakash 18413306
Pre-service Teacher Phone Number: Pre-service Teacher Email Address:
0468572296 18413306@student.westernsydney.edu.au

Placement Details: If you haven’t complete 60 hours face to face you must provide a detailed
statement of how your experience meets the outcomes for Professional Practice CE. Attach
evidence.

Placement Name: Lachlan Macquarie College Placement Phone Number:

Year 8 gifted and talented days and Volunteer 0404816822
days at Fairvale High School
Placement Address: Placement Email Address:
Western Sydney University, South Campus. cherine.spirou@det.nsw.edu.au
Building EHA
Fairvale High School
Contact Person: Cherine Spirou

Describe in 500 WORDS any features and benefits of the setting you attended. Consider
number of students, location details, age of students, types of educational programs
offered and any other salient aspects of the experience. Consider how this experience will
contribute to your development as a beginning teacher.

The professional experience at Western Sydney University for the year 8 gifted and talented
days was a very rewarding and insightful experience. I had the pleasure to work with students
from so many schools all over Western Sydney. As well as meeting schools I would be doing
my preservice teaching. St Clair where I did my PP1 and much later in my PP2 Doonside
where I am at currently. The year groups were fairly easy to manage and the teachers and
students really enjoyed my demonstrations. The experience involved my learning a chemistry
lab. I was assigned the colour lab where I worked with paper + ammonium chromatography,
glycerin + Potassium permanganate, acid base neutralization and xylem and phloem
transportation in flowers. These labs were repeated daily so I developed a really good
understanding of the content and carried out demos effectively. If I had any trouble I had help
from Cherine and my other colleagues in the other labs. At the end of the day I would discuss
my labs with Cherine and another colleague. Just reviewing the session any problems,
highlights, and feedback.

Student management was needed and executed with certain disruptive students. Use of
countdown to silence 321… was an effective tool in managing students. Multiple forms of
representation were used for the demonstration. A booklet with the methods of the experiments
were provided, a visual representation of the outcome and auditory explanation of each
component. Formative assessment was utilized to gauge the understanding of students during
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each demo and at the end of the session. If a school was doing well I provided less assistance
and explanation and let them do as much of the labs themselves. Risks and safety procedures
were conducted before every lab began. The labs were organized with the longest parts going
first. The Chromatography was the conducted first then the flowers. Acid and base and finally
the glycerin and Potassium permanganate.

It was so amazing to see the amount of students who were engaged and enthusiastic about their
learning for science. If schools had the ability to use some of the chemicals used in the
university setting they may be more engaged with science. This seemed to be the case because
the school I did my PP1 with were present and the year 8s were more engaged than when they
were in class. My personal goal in this practical was to take not of all the schools that attended
and the behaviour and engagement of students with science. It gave me a rare exposure to
multiple schools all at once. Truly a one of kind experience. I think that students learnt about
so many things that they didn’t expect was relevant to their lives. For example the glycerin and
potassium permanganate experiment is used in back burning. Students who lived in the regions
where this occurred didn’t know any of this and were thrilled. There was a WOW experience
always with the flowers and dye. Students may have done similar experiments in school but
physically seeing the petals change their color in a matter of minutes really got them thinking
and questioning.

This experience gave me a deeper appreciation for the teaching profession. It was such a
rewarding experience. It has developed my pedagogy. I want to make my lessons more
engaging and increase the number of experiments I do. If I can I want to be able to have a
physical representation of whatever concept I’m teaching in class because in my prac I felt that
because of the practical’s students engaged so much. The other setting of my practical was in
the Fairvale high school and I was able to help students through one on one explanations in the
class when they were having trouble with what they were learning from the teacher. I floated
around and experienced the science extension class for the first time. The level of knowledge
was awesome the students were actively engaged with a proper uni level investigation. I learnt
how to go about teaching a science extension class as well as an investigating science class.