Professional Experience Final Assessment 2020

Journal Reflection- Claudia Svilans

7-week placement
Monday 25th May
I was looking forward to being back at “Hawks” Primary School. Coming back to the class, I
wanted to bring a greater positive outlook in the hope that students can mirror this to
experience more success in the class and their daily lives. This is because in term 1, I felt as if
I didn’t interact enough with the class to build strong relationships (for quite a bit of time I
didn’t get anywhere and continued to be friends rather than a teacher-student relationship),
I didn’t assert discipline enough, and when I did invoke discipline, I referred to negative
consequences right away instead of trying to reinforce positive consequences. On my first
day, students in the class were still very happy to approach me which surprised me because
it felt as if I haven’t been gone for 2 months. As I had dyed my hair from blonde to brown, it
was amusing to me that the students thought I was a new person, and this confused them.
But they soon worked out that I was the Claudia that was from Term 1 which was a relief. I
tried my best to interact with the students and talk with them when I could about
themselves or work to put myself out there and build strong relationships with them.

I have been working with Student A (who needs an SSO or support person) since term 1
when the school year commenced. He has been diagnosed with Autism which contributes
towards having a challenging behaviour and not reaching year 6 level for a few subjects. On
Monday, I tried to work with Student A who continuously said “no” when I prompted
questions and ideas for him to make a start on his work. Personally, this can get quite
frustrating and I feel unsuccessful when I can’t get him to do any work. However, I need to
remind myself that he has good days and bad days, and the more I try to build a strong
relationship with him will make it better. By the end of the day, I was relieved to be back at
Hawthorndene as my placement school, but I am anxious for the load of teaching I must
adopt when I haven’t planned hardly anything with lessons or a unit.

Tuesday 26th May

For Mathematics, I listened in on the lesson about rates. This is a combined share class with
both Mrs L and Miss Kim’s students. I found it difficult to remember the processes and
strategies of mathematical concepts because of how long ago when I did this in primary
school myself. Therefore, I am fully relearning some of the maths which students may only
be reviewing. This is troubling for me as I feel embarrassed when trying to help students’
even though sometimes, I haven’t got a clue if it is correct or not. I am also determined to
give maths my best go and make mistakes but learn from them and be better with my
ability. In this lesson, a student from Miss Kim’s class asked for my help (division with rates),
and we both gave it a go and I’m hoping for next time that I can be better equipped by being
confident and knowing the content to transfer this to students’ understandings.

At the end of the day, students have Japanese so Mrs L and I have spare time to discuss the
lesson I would be teaching tomorrow in Health. We discussed what appropriate activities
would be useful for students as this is a sensitive subject in schools. I asked about if I am
allowed to ask students if any of them had experienced bullying as it is logical that I
shouldn’t because it isn’t something we want to highlight in front of peers and put them on
the spot. Therefore, Mrs L suggested a different angle and talk and analyse the Australian
statistics of cyberbullying in greater depth, so students are more aware of the impact
cyberbullying has on their generation and why it is common in schools. Overall, I’m
organised for Health tomorrow and looking forward to teaching a formal lesson.

Wednesday 27th May

On Wednesdays, we have rotations where all three 6/7 classes shift to each room/teacher
for Health Education, HASS, and Science. I taught each class half a lesson (40 minutes) in
Health on the topic of Cyberbullying as they have already been exposed to the topic of
Bullying in lessons. We covered social media statistics (for the second two classes we took a
class poll on who has a phone and uses different social media platforms), discussion to come
up with a student-friendly definition with keywords, looked at a definition I found, watched
a video on being an upstander, and looked at strategies to be an upstander.

We had our pastoral care worker (Jenna) from the school come in and talk to the students
about feeling in a low place and being negative due to the circumstances we are currently in
(COVID-19). She also brought a basket full of little feeling plush toys. Everyone had a feeling
and we answered questions and pointed at a feeling (e.g. how do you feel waking up early
for school in the morning?). This came about due to students coming forward and talking
about how they were feeling suicidal to Jenna. There was a specific year 6 student in my
class who had delivered a letter to the pastoral care worker that covered information about
feeling suicidal, that she isn’t good enough because her parents are always pushing her to
do well but then punishing her when she doesn’t meet their expectations, and she wasn’t
feeling love or security at home that would lead to self-harm. There was a student who
made a joke about depression in one of the classes and Jenna shut this down right away
because too many of them don’t take mental health seriously and that’s why so many of
them don’t feel open to talking about feelings or what they have going on. I think it was
beneficial to reinforce that students are important and capable in doing their very best and
that they have support here at the school because sometimes students are much harsher on
themselves and forget the positives in a difficult time like COVID-19.

Thursday 28th May

In the morning, Mrs L gave me the opportunity to take Fitness with the students in the gym.
As my major is in Physical Education, I feel confident and passionate when teaching this
subject. However, the outcomes could not have been worse with student behaviour and
management. I found that when the students aren’t with Mrs L, they are more prone to
acting difficult and rude towards other teachers. This hasn’t happened just to me, but
regularly for the specialist subject teachers for Arts and Japanese. For example, there was a
group of year 6 girls I was talking to on our way to Performing Arts. I told them they were
walking slow and needed to catch up with the group because we were late. One of them
challenged me by replying, “well I could walk even slower” and proceeded to slow her pace.
The timing for specialist subjects is very strict because they have limited time with classes
each week that must be utilised as best as possible (40 minutes for Performing Arts and
once a week). Therefore, I must keep students in line with school policies, otherwise it
would be my mentor teacher who would be criticized. Afterwards, my mentor teacher
discussed with the students the impact their responses have towards specifically pre-service
teachers’ feelings and emotions. She said something along the lines of, “Imagine learning to
be a teacher, trying your best, and having students poke how far they can go to test you.
Being disrespectful towards a pre-service teacher like Miss Svilans, or any teacher affects
their confidence enormously and sometimes they don’t even want to teach students again
because they give up”. She then addressed certain students that specifically were
disrespectful, that I reported back to her, so they understood what is inappropriate and has
to be stopped before it becomes consistent problematic behaviour. She reminded them on
the expectations that are in place towards communication between teachers and students
and being respectful (not talking back, listening and giving eye contact, and engaging in
lessons), so that we can build on relationships and a positive learning environment. This
reminds me of the saying “help me, help you”, if students are willing to help me when asked
with different tasks and jobs (for example, handing out worksheets), then I would extend my
hand to support them when they need as-well.

In mathematics, Mrs L suggested for me to take two students that need one-on-one support
and form a small group together. We were still working on rates and I understood the
questions so it would go well. I would question them to critically think, but also expanding
on processes and instructions in a variety of ways (not just me giving them the answers
unless they really don’t know) so they comprehend how to answer these questions
themselves. Student C was surer of her knowledge and judgements compared to student D.
Therefore, I would pose the question first to student D and then to student C so that he had
the first opportunity to have a go and for student C to help then if he was stuck. I hadn’t
gone as far as asking about Student D’s background with the teacher (he was in Room 12 so
not my regular classroom), but I think he had also been diagnosed with Autism. He willingly
worked in this small group giving ideas about the next step we were completing and
answers when we were completing multiplication. Because I was questioning students, this
did take longer to do the problems, but for them to make sense about rates, they need to
know each step to find the overall answer to then be able to individually complete this
work. I enjoyed working in a small group as it was easier to clear up student misconceptions
and focus on the parts that they struggled with. I hope to do this small grouping again for
next lesson and bring in my times table cards that could help student D more with basic
mathematical skills.

Friday 29th May

My mentor teacher had a leavers day, so I was going to be with a relief teacher. I didn’t
know what to expect with regard to if I would have the same opportunities to teach when
Mrs L is here, or strictly observation only. The relief teacher was lovely but could not
manage the classroom capably due to her soft nature and quiet presence. With our 6/7
students, once they become chatty, they won’t quieten unless the teacher can say a word
louder than them e.g. “Listen in”, “Quiet now”, or “Look and listen”, or using a strategy such
as non-verbally counting on their hand, doing a countdown (5, 4, 3, 2, and 1), or waiting
patiently. This let me rise to the occasion to take responsibility and show that I could handle
the pressures of being a teacher.

I was challenged with Student A when he started misbehaving (grunting and grabbing onto
table legs to pull himself onto his chair- only using his arms and not his legs to move around
on the floor). This caused distraction from schoolwork/learning and feelings of discomfort
for other students, therefore, this was negatively affecting the classroom environment. To
deal with this incident, I was forceful in my language using words like, “now, come on, stop,
and must”, and I eventually got him sitting on the couch in our shared room. I then asked
him to tell me what was going on and why he was behaving in that way. He was talking to
me, but it wasn’t making sense. For example, he said that he couldn’t sit in a chair for a long
time but with no reason as to why. I said if he was fidgety or too lethargic, he could stand up
at his desk or use a different chair (we have square cubes that can be a seat). He said no to
these options and said that it won’t help because he always sits in a chair. This comes back
to his sleeping routine at home (he has a TV in his room and doesn’t sleep until late which
affects the following day with learning) and I think because he lies in bed for long hours
before sleeping, then his body feels sore or hurts as his posture isn’t accustomed to the hard
chair. I told him to take a break by grabbing some water or sitting on the couch for a little bit
until he felt ready to come back to the lesson.

I took full responsibility for the class in English, BTN, and HASS catch up work. In BTN, I told
students that they could collect their lunch as long as everyone exits the classroom silently.
Once students started walking to their lockers, there was a cluster of student talk. I
reminded them that if we couldn’t do this at complete silence that we would start again.
There were two boys who had been talking to each other the whole time in BTN and were
the source of talking when students were getting their lunch. I pointed them out to stay
behind until everyone else had left and this showed my seriousness and authority to the
students which resulted in deafening silence from everyone else. I felt that my decision was
justified to identify the two students and talk to them both individually afterwards. This was
so they understood the responsibility they have with their behaviour as they were
distracting with noisy chatting which is not expected behaviour when watching a video or
listening to teacher instructions. I think I would have been more satisfied with my classroom
management if I had quietly corrected them by approaching them while watching BTN so
that I acted immediately when their misbehaviour started. Next time, I need to be more
prompt with my management because I know what I need to do.

Once all students are packed up for the end of the day, Mrs L commonly plays a game with
the students when we have spare time. I decided we could have a sharing time for what
students were going to be doing on the weekend. This was captivating because majority of
the students had something to say about family, friends, exercising, travelling, or staying
home which was fantastic improvement on communication with each other and being able
to informally talk to get to know one another more.
Feedback from the relief teacher. She commented on how I put a note on the board to
encourage the students to approach her and say hello, had Mental Math questions
organised for students to complete, delivered explicit instructions, worked well with a
student with a challenging behaviour, and having good relationships with the students that
they respond to me positively.

Monday 1st June

I know that helping students comes with experience, however, I want to work on my
communication when phrasing information and ideas. I know I regularly overlook students’
comments and work when they show me when I say phrases such as, “good work, well
done, great, I like that, etc”. This often occurs when I am marking student work for English
with their weekly article because I get caught up with what I want to praise them on and
don’t exactly have the words.
Sometimes I try to be critical and give students constructive feedback and it backfires. For
example, in English for writing, the students must write what they already knew from the
article, what they now know, and questions they have (article for the week link:
https://www.dogonews.com/2020/5/11/street-artist-banksys-game-changer-pays-tribute-
to-covid-19-frontline-workers). One of the students asked for my advice on what she had
written, and I had said she made valid points on her prior knowledge and what she had
learnt, but I suggested that she needed to expand on what was written by adding another
sentence or question for any one of the parts to show a comprehensive understanding
drawn from completing the activity. She did not appreciate this and even when I prompted
her to say how she already knew about the artist Banksy or gave her examples of other
questions that I personally had and if she explored those too (e.g. if Banksy would be
completing any other COVID-19 related projects that positively or negatively affect social
and political concerns or why did he choose that certain hospital and if it has any links with
his identity?), she didn’t have any intention of doing any more work from that feedback.
Therefore, I left it alone and said she didn’t have to do anything else if she thought this was
satisfactory. I then went and marked other student work. I look back at this and think was
that the wrong thing to say? Maybe the student was having an off day? I know she could
have given some other details to a greater extent because she is skilled with writing and can
do anything she puts her mind to. I wish I had framed what I was asking better or let her
show my mentor teacher her work to know more about what she was looking for from this
activity.

Tuesday 2nd June

In the morning, I was thinking about my Relationships for Learning topic from last year and I
wanted to read some of the content from the textbook: Positive Learning Environments:
Creating and Maintaining Productive Classrooms by De-Nobile, Lyons, and Arthur-Kelly
(2017). This was to assist me in making some changes with the way that I offer help and
motivate student A because today he turned his back to me, tried to move his chair away
from where I was sitting to create distance, and continually just reply “no” to all my
prompts. From the textbook, it suggested asking the student: what are they trying to get
from behaving the way they are? This encourages students to address their own behaviour
and understand how this could be limiting their learning. I think I will use this next time
when talking to student A to try to get him to open up more (as this will show he is a
capable learner but when he chooses to misbehave then he is putting valuable learning at
risk). In the first week I talked about only using negative consequences, I looked back at the
textbook which had information about the seven connecting habits:

Supporting: Saying and doing things that help others.

Encouraging: Giving hope and inspiring.
Listening: Being attentive to someone’s message.
Accepting: Being non-judgemental.
Trusting: Having confidence in the other person.
Respecting: Showing genuine interest.
Negotiating: Working towards mutual agreement.
These are some strategies I need to implement more when working with students to
positively impact their mindset to motivate them in engaging with work.

I was preparing myself for my 2 nd Health lesson which was still a substantial deal as my
liaison was observing the lesson and meeting me for the first time. I was also quite nervous
about talking to Mick about TPA 1 and 2 because I had started number 1 but wasn’t any
close to finishing. I also felt guilty that I still hadn’t handed these up when they were due
before placement even commenced. I want to finish my TPA’s as soon as possible but I do
already feel overwhelmed with the workload I have with lesson plans and units (organising
materials, differentiation, PowerPoint slides, and feedback) and I am still confused on the
structure and types of responses that are expected from the questions.

Wednesday 3rd June

Today was Part 2 of my Health lessons on Cyberbullying. Mick, my liaison, came to visit and
watched the start of my lesson. This was the interactive part where students were
recapping about what we done in the previous lesson. There were three questions on the
board to promote discussion, which were:
- What were some key ideas of the lesson on Cyberbullying?
- In your own words, what does the word upstander mean? - Can you remember NED?
- What are some strategies associated with preventing/diverting cyberbullying?
I did well by directing a whole-class discussion and prompting students to a certain
outcome. I was joyfully surprised that students attempted with possible answers for our
discussion. We talked about a definition of cyberbullying, the word upstander and not a
bystander, NED (never give up on helping your school or for others to feel safe, encourage
others to be an upstander too, and do your best to stop cyber/bullying), and what can they
do in situations to handle or deal where bullying is present. This shows that students liked
the opportunity with a discussion as it is freer for them to contribute and they may feel less
intimidated talking in-front of their peers. In all classes, students aren’t very familiar with
describing and explaining their emotions and feelings when we played a feelings edition
celebrity heads game. Majority of the students struggled to explain different contexts where
the emotion could be felt, or what might be happening with people’s facial expressions e.g.
sad and they are crying. I would like to work on this further as it is important for students to
be open and be able to be aware of their emotions so they can be honest and communicate
this if they need support. Mrs L gave me very constructive feedback about shortening the
time between questions and discussions by giving the students all the questions at once and
having one discussion at the end. This is because students get bored and disengage and
once that happens, it’s very hard to pick the lesson back up again. Therefore, for the next
class I did all the questions and one discussion at the end which was much better with our
brainstorming of ideas and debating of perspectives and opinions.

Mick looked over TPA 1 for me and said that I’m progressing well with what I have
completed. I did express my concerns to him that I’m already behind from not completing
TPA 1 and 2 yet and I’m worried that my placement is advancing so quickly that I haven’t
collected enough evidence either. He assured me that I could get it completed as long as I
am organised and balanced by putting time towards both teaching on placement and the
reflections with TPA.
The feedback above was the notes given to me through email from Mick. I was glad that my
strengths were identified, for example, ensuring my KUD’s were associated with the
Australian Curriculum, having a strong presence over the class, and having engaging
activities that the students enjoyed. I hope I can continue to progress upon those strengths
and work further on differentiation as an aspect of my teaching which still needs
improvement.

Thursday 4th June

In the morning, students had their Extreme Sports Informative text due. For those who did
not hand it up, this gave me the opportunity to pass on a message to parents/carers over
Seesaw to say their child hasn’t passed this work up on time and that if they could work with
their child tonight to ensure they hand it up tomorrow morning. I need to improve on being
more forceful with students who lack initiative and communication skills about handing in
assignments (don’t approach me until they’re asked), giving excuses as to why, and not
negotiating new agreements with assignments. I think currently I am too undemanding and
careful about students’ reactions when they need to understand that there are
consequences to their actions (especially with assignments). Students had been given a fine
for not handing it up, informed that their parents/carer would be contacted, and they were
urged to finish it by tomorrow, otherwise the fine would be raised and they would have to
stay in at recess and lunch to finish it (we would be editing their informative text to build
upon making them into a good copy on the Friday).

I started our new unit in Math which is on 3D shapes. The first main response I got from
students was that they didn’t overly like Math. As an observation, I think this was because
many of them already assumed that they weren’t good at it and didn’t understand the
process with some topics (fixed mindsets that they couldn’t develop more). First, students
completed a pre-test. I acknowledged to the students that this test was only for me to
identify and analyse where they were with shapes with their current knowledge and
understanding and all they need to do is try their best. This is an important comment to
make as some students find tests daunting when they are being marked and see it as a
punishment for them to fail. I was very happy with how the lesson started as students were
very engaged when talking about 2D shapes in a 3D world. Students conveyed excellent
responses as to what they already know. For example, a year 6 student gave the example of
paper being a 2D shape. We kept building on from this by talking and debating with
terminology on how 3D shapes have length, width, AND height (the paper has the length,
width and a very small scaled thickness which still qualifies as a 3D object). Expanding on
this discussion, students gave examples about what 2D shapes can be found around the
classroom and what 3D object they make up. One of the main activities we completed in the
lesson was students’ using pipe cleaners to form 2D shapes and then collaborating with
their table to make a 3D shape. Although I really liked the idea of the activity, student’s
excitement made it very difficult to manage behaviour. The concern was that this
excitement turned into silly and distracting behaviour. I chose not to give students’ the
satisfaction of not staying on task when I asked them questions and they responded
irresponsibly. I tried to redirect their attention to communicating with each other about
shapes and what they were creating by stating that was the activity’s learning objective and
they needed to get back on track to get there. Next time, I will consider grouping students
according to their strengths and peers they don’t normally work with to enhance our
classroom dynamics. The route I want to take from this lesson now is moving towards views
of shapes (top, side, and front view) as this is identified as the main learning topic for KUD’s
on the Australian Curriculum. I’m looking forward to our following lesson and hope I can
continue to do more practical lessons which the students find fun and engaging.

Friday 5th June

On Fridays, students have P.E. with the specialist teacher. I came in just for observation but
was able to help by taking note of student times in the beep test. Mr Leigh already had
student results from a beep test earlier in the year. It was very interesting to see student
opinions and perspectives about the beep test. My personal opinion when I was in high
school was that I didn’t like it as I knew already that I wasn’t very physically fit with
endurance activities (running) but would give it my best shot to see how far I could go. Mr
Leigh gave students’ very positive and inspiring words beforehand to say it is about personal
performance and don’t distract those who want to be serious in the test. Two year 7
students didn’t want to partake in the test and when they did, one of them stopped at
approximately level 2.0. His friend continued, but the friend who was still running kept
reassuring him, “do you want me to stop?”. This bothered me because the beep test isn’t a
punishment/ joke or what you do with friends. It is a measurement of students’ own
cardiovascular system and their VO2 maximum (how well their heart pumps blood to
circulate it around the body to the parts that need oxygen- their maximum capacity for their
body to uptake oxygen will depend on how far they can then exercise). To see these
students not taking it seriously means there won’t be accurate scoring amongst the whole
class, but also there is an issue with their motivation and attitude towards P.E. It wasn’t
surprising on which students who did this, but I hope something changes so these students
can enjoy P.E. more with types of sports or activities. I would like to see how Mr Leigh
teaches P.E. more as it is a subject where majority students are interested in and he does
teach what I have been learning at university (game-sense), so it would be great to see how
and what ways he implements this for classes.
When students were editing their peer’s informative text, many of them did not provide
constructive feedback to the person. I was individually working with a year 7 student who I
noticed had written “I agree with this” or “this is great work” on a peer’s paper with no
follow-up reasons. I asked him thoughtful questions such as: “Why do you think this is great
writing? What makes it a strong sentence/ paragraph? and Do you know about this sport
and know it is information that is educated and aware?”. He was honest in his answers by
telling me he doesn’t know why he wrote that and just wanted to write something on the
paper as feedback. Because year 6/7’s focus on the seven writing steps program, I referred
him to each step and if he noticed any of those strategies in the writing (tension by using
long sentences, ending each paragraph in an exciting way with one word or a question to
persuade them to want to do the sport, or if the person included a sizzling start that made
him want to read more). I hope helped him to critically think about how his feedback would
improve his peer’s work, and in the future, help himself edit his own work as well. I’m
looking forward to the long weekend as I need to put time to complete more of my TPA’s
and finalise lesson activities for the coming week.

Tuesday 9th June

In mathematics, we were continuing on with 3D shapes. Last Friday, I was meant to
photocopy the activities sheet that the pre-service teacher had in our shared classroom but
forgot to and only received a copy from it on the Monday night. I felt so overwhelmed to do
this activity with my students because the other pre-service teacher in our shared classroom
was praised heavily on her lesson as it went so well. However, I was disorganised and didn’t
realise the large amount of cue cards that had to be cut out before our lesson, so I decided
to proceed with the activities that I had originally planned. The students grasped the
concept of top, side, and front view really well and quickly by drawing plans on a worksheet,
I then moved students practicing more plans from a textbook on the PowerPoint, and they
also had the choice making their own cube shapes from the unifix cubes which they
enjoyed. I think the activities needed to be more challenging or contrasting for students
because it was very repetitive and could have involved more problem solving so they could
work on their critical thinking which I know they like with Math. I’m going to try to make the
lesson more practical next time to further engage students. After school, we had a staff
meeting in our year level groups (3 6/7 teachers) and each one is in a group with regard to
Literacy, Numeracy, and Critical and Creative Thinking. It was interesting to listen and
participate in as the teachers talked about the concerns they have for the school with their
students. Miss Kim referred us to the student’s Literacy NAPLAN results where many of the
students scored low with paragraphing and missed marks for that section. Our next decision
was to do a writing lesson on paragraphs to refresh students’ thinking and understanding on
paragraphs because as year 6/7, they need to be proficient moving into high school. I really
liked the use of data in this meeting as the teachers analysed an area on what students need
to improve on to succeed not just in writing but a skill that effects all subjects. I wonder
how Mrs L will go about this in the lesson to come.

Wednesday 10th June

Today I introduced the Health assignment to all 6/7 students. In conjunction to the
assignment, we did an activity before-hand where students ranked scenarios on how serious
they were as an incident with cyberbullying. After talking with students, I held a whole-class
discussion/ debate as to where they put a scenario on their 9-diamond template. I liked this
activity as students get driven to reasoning with me on their perspectives and opinions. For
example, one of the scenarios had a person photoshopping his friend’s appearance to look
like animals without his permission. Students thought this was the less serious situation but
didn’t regard images without permission/consent (defamation, violation of rights, and
invasion of privacy) which can be very serious if it is through malicious notions. We had
concluded that it was harmless as they are “friends”, but there also needed to be more
context about the situation as the friend may have kept the pictures private and didn’t show
anyone. This showed me that students had basic ideas and thoughts about problem solving
questions, however, we needed the class discussion to make deeper meaning on the impact
and effects cyberbullying can cause victims and bullies.
After the lesson with my class, I realised that I hadn’t explained the assignment as clearly
and in depth as I had wanted. My mentor’s feedback for the next classes was to give them a
few minutes to thoroughly read the assignment criteria sheet and then question them
afterwards so that I could pick out students to see if they were attentive and if there were
still gaps with what they had to do for the assignment. This was more effective rather than
telling students myself compared to the first class because sometimes students fear that if
they are chosen then they must know the answer to the question as they are on display in-
front of the class. But I only pick random students because if they don’t know they I can
choose someone-else to inform them what the answer really is. Some comments from
students were positive in that they are really enjoying the assignment from just the first
lesson. There were a few students who verbally told me after class that they liked the
assignment and were happy to get started and see where it takes them to create a poster,
so this uplifted my pre-conceived thoughts and impressions about the assignment as it had
positive outcomes already. I had taught the last class a bit differently by giving them a
challenge to come up with an app to then lead into the assignment- this was better because
they then had ideas and could go somewhere instead of not knowing where to start which
was a concern with the previous classes. My only issue with this last class is there is a
student who I think has an autism background. He had a bad reaction to the assignment. He
covered his head with his hands and began to slowly rock because he became overloaded
about the amount of work that had to be done and couldn’t figure out what the criteria was
asking him even though I personally sat down with him and explained it slowly and multiple
times. My mentor suggested to me how to reduce the criteria for him and another student
so that it was doable and achievable in the timeframe we had. I will seek to talk to him in a
quiet time in the week to talk about what he can do for this assignment. Ending on a good
note, I’m excited for our lesson next week where I have produced advertising templates on
photoshop for them to use to display their homepage/home menu.

Thursday 11th June

In the morning, I was with a TRT. I was the main teacher for the class which didn’t worry me
as I would complete the roll, Mental Math, then we had Performing Arts, and Fitness for the
morning (very uncomplicated morning). The TRT had to come up with fitness games, but
instead we gave the class choices. As this was the only thing she had to organise (but didn’t)
that Mrs L indicates in her emails for TRT’s, it came back to me having to teach this lesson
as-well. At times this is frustrating because these people are graduated teachers but aren’t
showing responsibility for simple tasks that I take over as they can’t manage 6/7 students.
Our Math lesson was the opposite of what students have currently been completing-
instead of finding the top, side, and front view of blocks, they were drawing the block shape
from the views given with isometric paper. Many students enjoyed this as it was challenging
to think of the perspective of how the block object should look when it has varying levels.
There was a group of students that asked if I could give them homework because it is a topic
they enjoy. My mentor then gave students the choice to continue on with Math or grab a
laptop to complete more of their HASS project. Giving the students this ultimatum wasn’t
fair because many of them needed the time for their project, so they moved onto doing that
very quickly. I could see some of them were lost between choosing HASS or Math because
they did really enjoy drawing with the isometric paper, and I think it would have been better
to just continue with Math when students are in the zone.

Friday 12th June

I ran the morning as the teacher and I am getting more use to setting up the board and
doing the roll (knowing the different symbols for the types of absences with illness and
family, and for late students). Normally with Fridays we don’t have many reminders or notes
so I organised a fun riddle in the morning as-well.
In the morning, we organised students to have laptops to engage in a Math interactive
game. It was really successful and engaging for students to work through the 4 levels on the
game from Scootle called “Building Site”: http://www.scootle.edu.au/ec/pin/NCAUQH?
userid=19359. Each level utilised at least one or more of a certain view (front, side, or top
view). The game showed where there were consistencies and inconsistencies with how the
class is going with the unit topic of 3D shapes. It was straightforward for some students, but
some forgot the importance of perspective. For example, the game would ask them to show
the side view where the builder is standing, and it would trick students when it would show
multiple buildings, however, the buildings would appear behind the first, so they wouldn’t
see them when standing on the side. This was a great opportunity for me to explain my
expertise knowledge with mathematical language and terms for the students to learn.
I was extremely surprised when student A said he wanted to play the game, so I set it up on
his laptop. Although this lasted for not more than 10 minutes before he gave up and said it
was too challenging. I let him know that next time he should ask questions and it’s okay to
ask for help because I would’ve liked to go through it with him (however he had already
closed the tab and didn’t want to try again for the moment). If this happens again, I will stay
with this student to make sure what he is doing is understood and work together.

I’m utilising our specialist lesson time more to organise and prepare lessons while at school.
I needed Mrs L’s advice on what I could do for Math based on last lesson which was a major
success (I wanted to top that lesson, but I was also running out of ideas on other creative
outlets students could use for their 3D shapes learning). She suggested giving students
isometric paper to build a block city. For students who need more of a challenge, I could
make sure their building had to be bigger with the guidelines and with those who were
struggling, I could make it smaller and start blocks for them to expand on when drawing. I’m
excited to complete this in our next lesson because I find our students are really innovative
and will want to create something unique and/or realistic!

Monday 15th June

The homework I organised was completed in the lesson as my mentor teacher told me that
as primary school students, they’re not meant to receive any homework. They currently
have a huge project for HASS that should take the half an hour to an hour homework block
out of school time. Therefore, she told me that I shouldn’t do any homework for this unit
and only go about teaching the 3D shapes in our lesson time. I didn’t agree with this
because I just wanted to set the homework for students who wanted to take it home. It was
going to be up to the students if they chose to do this extra practice or not without any
pressure from myself. I was disappointed that half of the lesson was for the homework task
and not their block cities. However, it was a very successful math lesson with students
drawing their own block cities. A student wanted to replicate the Burj Khalifa with blocks
which was fun and inspiring for other students to try to draw. One student concerned me as
he wasn’t using the squares to draw cubes and therefore, was having a lot of trouble. I
asked if he wanted my help and he insisted that he would give it another go. However, I
ended up helping by starting off the width and height requirements I set (4 blocks wide and
5 blocks high) and asked him to go from there. He made a big improvement by continuing
the blocks on and used the squares correctly, but there were still some where he hadn’t
used the blocks exactly right and had gotten confused. I pointed those areas out to him to
identify places where it could be better, but I also said that it was much better than how he
started so he knew that he was on the right track.

Very busy morning with students handing up an assessment piece for English. It was hard
for me to juggle all the student’s assignments (catching the ones who didn’t hand it up)
whilst completing the roll too. I had to negotiate with some of the students who didn’t hand
it up. This was good practice for me in handling disciplinary action by giving those students
“fines” due to their disorganised manner and miscommunication by not approaching me
about why they couldn’t hand it up in the first place. I do understand this method so
students know they have done something wrong and so the punishment doesn’t continue,
they do what was asked. However, I’m still coming to terms being authoritarian by being
more controlling to maintain order with serious academic work such as assignments. I
wouldn’t normally lead with teacher centred behavioural management as I don’t want to
dominant the class and I want to work with them, but to keep fairness amongst the class,
then it must be enforced with assignments so students learn about expectations with time
constraints and passing work in as everyone else.

Tuesday 16th June

Students completed their 3D shapes summative test. Afterwards, I had realised that it had
too many questions in the time frame, and that some students didn’t attempt or get up to
question 5 which was worth 10 marks. I also should have edited the test more because a lot
of students misunderstood what the questions were asking, and this showed me that some
of the chosen words weren’t at year 6/7 level (the word discern was used instead of detect
or find out which the students would have understood). If students got over 5 marks for
question 5 then it counted towards their total mark as bonus points (35). If they received
under 5 for question 5, then they were marked out of 25 and those marks did not bump
their score. No students received over 5 marks, so everyone’s papers were marked out of
the total of 25. I was so proud of the student who at first, was so challenged using the
isometric paper, but in the test, really excelled and made immense improvement on his
drawing of 3D block shapes. I could sense his achievement at the end of our test when I was
collecting all the papers, when he said to me, “Look Miss Svilans! All straight lines and
boxes”. This really was a teaching highlight for me to know the practice we did together in
other activities went towards personal success for this student. Although he hadn’t reached
optimal performance that is expected for year 6/7, he is much closer to that goal from my
teaching and support which is all I look up to.
From student’s 3D shapes tests, I really want to use this evidence and the previous work in
our lessons towards TPA 4 as the unit plan. There are many parts that show meaningful and
valuable learning for the students as they are engaged and have progressed from the
starting point to the conclusion with their test.

We did a circuit again for fitness which I definitely will use in the future when I am a teacher
or TRT. Mrs L has circle activity task cards that have an exercise and amount on them. I
encouraged the students whilst they were completing it and made sure they weren’t
cheating (doing the technique properly- lunges and squats) which made some of them smile
and chat to me while exercising.

Wednesday 17th June

Rotations with Health where students are continuing on with their assessment. I am
concerned with some students that they will not be able to complete the assignment on
time as there were only a couple of students up to drawing their good copy. In addition, no
classes have yet started talking about their cue cards for the oral presentation part
(language and words that can be helpful when selling their application). I’m considering for
next week that I need to put some sentence starters on the board that they can use for their
oral. But this is bad timing with their HASS project due next Thursday which has been going
on for a near two months.
I like doing rotations as it gives me a chance to adjust the lessons one after the other. The
first lesson may be what I had planned, and then I self-reflect on what went well and what
could be improved to implement in the next lesson with another class. In addition to this, I
find my teaching does get better by the end of the day, but it also depends on the students I
have (with behaviour and personalities). For example, the last lesson of students tends to
look exhausted and tired being towards the end of the day, so it takes us longer to go
through activities and engage in discussions. They also miss a valuable opportunity to
advance on their assignment piece for Health when they have lesson time to do more rather
than leaving it as homework which they do frequently. I urged students to see me when
they need to as I will be in the classroom and they can always ask me questions or receive
paper for their good copy.

Thursday 18th June

Students completed an angles pre-test for mathematics. We then had 20 minutes to start on
the topic of angles. I began with explicitly talking about what objects we can see angles in
(from the pictures on the board and then other examples students can come up with). I had
some problem-solving questions for students to complete that I took from textbooks that
Mrs L lent me. There was quite a difference in what skills and knowledge and understanding
students have in the classroom. Some had no idea on how to use a protractor, whereas
some were very accurate and competent with their ability and had completed all the tasks I
had organised. One student completed everything, so I started going through the answers
with the class to do something else. This gave students the chance to ask questions if they
didn’t understand and it let me break down the question and answer more to simplify it. It
had been a while since I had to use a protractor from my schooling in primary years, so I
asked if there was a student that was competent that could explain and show me how to
use one. After I worked with a year 7 student, I could pass this information onto other
students, so they knew how to use a protractor too. I really would like to work more
alongside the students because I learn from them all the time in Mental and English with the
strategies and ideas they come up with.

Friday 19th June

I ran Mental Math in the morning. I enjoyed Mental Math because there was a distinct
missing understanding on algebra (linking like terms to complete the question). For
example, 3x + 4y – 2x – y, students collect the parts of the algebraic sentence that have the
same expression/ letter. I’m going to put more of these in our Mental so students can build
a better understanding on Algebra.

When the students were at P.E. I caught up with marking angles tests. Not all students have
the fundamental understanding about angles (what makes up an angle, differences between
angles, and being able to measure/ estimate angles). In addition, students need to improve
on their mathematical reasoning with problems where they are using operations to solve for
an answer. For example, a main question on the pre-test was finding the missing angle. A
quick process is to subtract the angle that is known from the total angle sum (90 degrees as
a right angle, 180 degrees as a straight angle, or 360 degrees for a reflex angle). One student
used a protractor to remeasure the angles and then calculated the missing angle from the
new angle that he found. This was not what the question was asking, so I reiterated with
students on another day that this question was a matter of using the operation subtraction
to find the angle. I worked with Student A in this test time too, but he couldn’t complete any
of the questions (not even knowing how many degrees are in a right angle) which concerns
me. I wasn’t sure where to go from there because out of all questions, knowing how many
degrees in the right angle was not as complicated compared to others. Therefore, I told him
to keep having a look over the test (I could have asked him to circle ones he wanted to know
more about but didn’t at the time), and I went off to help other students with their hands
up.

At the end of the day, I assisted some students with their HASS catch up lesson where I was
helping them research information or refining their sentences with grammar and spelling.
This was rewarding because there was one student in our class that told me he didn’t think
he could finish the assignment on time. I went over with him what parts he had completed
and what was left. He only had approximately 3 to 4 sections to go so I told him that he is
very capable and can definitely get that done within the time frame and to be more
organised he could put notes in his diary and make sure he has a deadline for every part. He
looked relieved from our chat and I’m very hopeful that he’ll finish this assignment!

Monday 22nd June

I had organised to see my liaison today, however, it didn’t go to plan. In the morning there
was a meeting for all year 6/7 students with the principal and our teachers. This was when I
was meant to teach my lesson and be observed by Mick, but it was pushed back and Mick
had a lot of us to see today, and therefore, missed my teaching. We did get a chance to talk
about the TPA’s and Mick had marked off both TPA 1 and 2. I just need to refine both of
these before I hand them up on FLO. I went to immense detail for these TPA’s and I feel that
even though it was some of my best work, it took me a very long time to finish which I need
to improve on with time management.

Today we went through the 3D shapes test. Because we used the test from the Australian
Curriculum, I could go through the information on the website which were formal and fitting
for the students to grasp. It was much easier for me to explain what I was looking for from
what was written from the website because it showed how marks were distributed
according to the mathematical understanding, problem solving, and reasoning the students’
provided. One question was topical as it showed a block object of stairs (students had to
draw the plans for that shape) and you couldn’t see what was behind it, but it didn’t mean
that there weren’t more blocks there. As a whole class we came to the decision that if you
didn’t draw the blocks or if you did, both answers were correct because it is dependent on
how you perceive the object. The overall feedback I got from students after their 3D shapes
unit was that they really enjoyed it and wanted to do more. One student said he printed out
isometric paper at home to practice drawing shapes himself. This was extremely positive
feedback for my teaching because I gave the students time to draw shapes in class, and this
transferred to them continuing on with this learning outside of school. Another student said
that she wanted to keep developing new things about this topic at school, which made me
feel that students could have needed more time to absorb the information and learning that
took place in the unit, but we did also need to move onto a new topic of angles!

The students do ask me for help now on a regular basis which gives me time to practice my
communication with them as the main teacher of the class (resolving conflicts, giving one-
on-one support, or asking for materials or stationery, etc). However, I sometimes find it hard
to keep up with helping all the students as there is 30 of them in the class, and I would value
my mentor’s support with the students at times but it is her decision with the other work
she has to complete.

Tuesday 23rd June

I had my Math lesson and the principal was observing. The hands-on activity was a success-
students showed great understanding with adding the angles together to make a straight
line (angle sum of a triangle). The students also had plenty of time to make a triangle as an
equilateral, isosceles, and scalene to see if it changes the angle sum.
I was happily surprised when I asked the students “If your triangle doesn’t add up to 180
degrees- what do you think could be the mistake/reasoning there?”. I first asked this not
exactly knowing the response myself. But a student’s response made it clear that others
may not have drawn straight lines, and therefore, that has impacted the angles sum. This
response told students’ that when they do drawings of shapes that they have to be accurate
otherwise it will impact the results of certain aspects (in this case angles in shapes).
We then did some book work- drawing complementary and supplementary angles and
finding the missing angle, showing mathematical reasoning if the angles were
complementary or supplementary from a pair of angles, and finding an angle
complementary/supplementary to a provided angle. I used a feedback tool where I put a
stamp in the students’ books, and they coloured in the face they felt towards the work we
had done today (red, yellow, green- bad, okay, or good). There was one student who made
a comment that she felt the activity was boring and she didn’t like it. I agree and disagree
with this because it was time for students to practice these problems with angles which can
be repetitive so students disengage, but it can become clearer to students on the processes
to work out questions that it becomes more natural when they complete Math with angles.
I think I could put an element of fun by having it as a classroom running circuit as a
competition to see how many problems you can complete. Although this wasn’t the
reaction I was looking for, other students had said they still got meaning out of the lesson.

Toward the end of the day when students had been working on their HASS projects, the
principal came bursting in to talk to all 6/7 students. She furiously told them that someone
had broken a laptop. This laptop could not be replaced due to the amount of damage
caused to it; therefore, the school was out $1200 to buy a single new laptop (Mrs L
personally saw it and said it looked as if someone had stepped on it and it did not look good
at all). The principal was more-so upset that no one had come forward and behaved
disrespectful toward school property. In addition, this may have never been found,
however, it wasn’t until a student at the end of the day when they tried to use it found it in
its poor condition. I definitely agree with all she had said because 6/7 students are meant to
be leaders and role models of the school, and when they take things for granted, then this
reflects unsatisfactorily on the school and can be influential to younger students to think it is
okay. After the principal left, we came to the decision that students will not be able to use
ICT for the rest of the term.

Wednesday 24th June

Students continued working on their Health assignment with next week as their
presentation lesson. Many of them expressed concerns to me that they won’t have it
completed in time as their major assignment is due for HASS on the Friday. At this time, it
annoyed me as it was students who do not use class-time efficiently and leave it for
homework because they would rather talk to their friends. This happens in many subjects
and I am on a strict time frame with my placement here already, so I can’t push this back
when other teachers could. One student pulled everything out of her pencil case and put it
up to her face as a mask. I asked her what she was doing, and she said she couldn’t find a
pencil she was looking for. I told her to focus on her assignment and to get back on task
instead of doing silly distracting things that affect herself and others around her.
I do want to push for the students to be finished by the Wednesday (1 st of July) as I want to
use this evidence towards my TPA (comparing students work with an assessment). But I do
feel mean as the students have talked to me that they can’t complete it, but then they will
have 2 weeks holidays as that will be their last week of Term 2, so it is better to get it done
while they have the information and knowledge and start Term 3 fresh with a new topic.

Thursday 25th June

Students had a big assignment due with HASS which was due in the morning. Therefore, it
was very busy for Mrs L to mark down who had and hadn’t given their assessment in.
Handing their HASS on time was a ticket towards being able to watch a film tomorrow as
their reward. There were students who were rushing to still glue parts and type the final
words for their assignment. There were at least two to three students who missed out
because they didn’t hand it up on time even though they had their consent form signed for
the film.
In Math, students did a Angles memory game where, one person at a time, would pick up a
card, if they got the card right (complementary and supplementary angles- find the missing
angle that would add up to 90 or 180 degrees) then they would keep it and see who would
get the most cards to win. Students feedback on this activity was that the angles problems
were easy for them, so they got through the memory game and testing one another on the
problems quite quickly. I value these answers from students so that if I got to do this task
again, then I would have more challenging problems (angles that aren’t at a whole number,
for example, 73 degrees and what is the supplementary angle to this), so that students have
to critically think and improve their mental processes to find the answers.

I’ve got most evidence organised for my TPA’s; it’s about writing it all up now to finish them.
I’m happy that it’s coming together because I was so overwhelmed before, but I know the
structure that I want to do, and I just want to get it done. I know what unit work I will be
using for each one apart from TPA 6 which I will be finalising in week 1 of Term 3 when I
come back to finish my placement.

Friday 26th June

I was setting up a video consent form for students which I will have to hand out on the
Monday to complete the video on Tuesday. I did want to hand it out today so students have
the weekend to organise getting it signed, however, due to the film, we would be running
very short on time right before the end of the day where students might not be as engaged
or listening which is what I need to address TPA 3 as a duty of care with videoing and why I
need them to take the note home for their parents/carers to know what is being done.
One student from our class who wasn’t able to watch the film utilised his time well by asking
me questions and feedback for his Health assignment. I am still worried about him because
even though he enhanced his work with regard to appearance, he hasn’t hit the mark with
labelling and his presentation speech which I had spoken to him about on multiple
occasions. There is a part in his speech that doesn’t have any relevance towards
cyberbullying and what we have been learning in the unit, and this is typical of this student
to use random information to try to show he still has a point for that criterion. I’m hoping he
might go over it with a parent or self-assess himself but there is a low chance for this to
happen. I really do want this student to succeed, but it’s difficult when he hasn’t listened to
the feedback I’ve provided or engaged in the project/ unit with learning. When Wednesday
comes, I’ll be able to see what his completed, but I do need to be in favour of the whole
class when it comes to marking and not just mark him based on his progress to achieve
more from my guidance and support.

Monday 30th June

In this last week, we had another pre-service teacher join Mrs L’s classroom, Mr Hal. This
was his observation week; however, he was mostly observing my teaching because I had
taken up approximately 80% of the teaching load being in the final weeks of my placement.
He is also from Flinders and is a 1 st year master’s student. It is nice having another pre-
service teacher in the classroom to have someone to talk to and bounce ideas off of. I gave
him copies of the worksheets and activities I had done for today so he could engage in the
content as-well.
I had completed some marking of the HASS projects with Mrs L. It was surprising to the
quality that some students had handed up with this being a 2-month assignment. I can
relate to the students that I do my assignments last minute, but they had a great amount of
class time to complete this assignment which is much different when they might go to
university. There were a few students who had plagiarised information from sections that
they researched. This was evident because there were words that I wouldn’t have used
myself or even Mrs L didn’t understand. I know that Mrs Kim had gone over
paraphrasing/putting information that is found into student’s own words and referencing
information to acknowledge work that they have used/ isn’t their own. Because of this,
students receive an automatic fail and have to resubmit their work again.

Students started their Term 3 project called PIP (personal interest project). This has been
running for a few years, and this year is a little different where students will be working on a
document electronically. The outline of PIP is that students come up with a concern/ new
improvement for a current issue that interests them. I already knew about this project as
Mrs L had started this with student A’s parents a few weeks ago so that we could set him up
to succeed and keep him on track with the workload. This project reminds me a lot about
the research project I had to complete for SACE in high school. I did not overly enjoy this
project because my teacher was new and didn’t know the structure of the project herself,
and I didn’t choose a topic I liked, and also it didn’t have much research about it either. I’m
excited to hear from students what they have chosen and what they might create alongside
it.

Tuesday 31st June

I had a discussion with our shared classroom teachers. The preservice teacher, Layla, had
talked with her class about how they are going with Health in Japanese. When she asked the
students to raise their hand if they were ready to present tomorrow, none of them raised
their hands. They also made up excuses saying that the assignment was too hard, so they
were time pressured to get all of it done. Layla told me she looked over the criteria and she
it was uncomplicated and for year 6/7 students, this was appropriate, and they would be
capable to complete this. I had completed the criteria with Mrs L so I already knew that it
wasn’t asking too much from the students because she had removed more parts to the
assignment that I thought would be at their level. I felt really distraught over this because
students knew about this due date in advance and it was very obvious, they hadn’t used
their class time effectively. Mrs Kim worked out that her class, being at the end of the day,
would have lost approximately an hour’s worth of class time compared to the other two 6/7
classes. We decided that the students from this class needed another lesson, and therefore,
would have tomorrow’s normal lesson to work on it and some time on the Friday to be
assessed. I hope students do appreciate that we have heard what they are saying and their
concerns and that we have come to a solution. I’m happy that this has worked out, but I’m
concerned about the timing that we might not get through all the students of this class by
leaving it for the last day of Term 3.

Students completed a choice group lesson based on where they think they stand currently
with our unit on angles. I was with group yellow where we would be going over the basics of
angles again to refresh their memories. This was the group that would be videoed for me to
complete my work with TPA 3. The video went smoothly, and it was great reflection for me
to watch afterwards so I could pick up on things I could have done differently. Because I put
so much time towards getting the other two groups ready, I didn’t have enough time to
work with the students that wanted to be in this group afterwards. After we had videoed, I
only had 10 extra minutes to work with 3 students that wanted to be in this group who I
knew struggled with the concept of angles. We did check over the types of angles and what
degrees they would be between, and complementary and supplementary angles. I would
have also liked to talk about the angle sum of a triangle because I think that would be very
useful information with other concepts in Math and when they go to high school. I hope I
will have another chance to talk to this group again to make sure they can catch up to the
class with this unit.

Wednesday 1st July

Presentations started for Health and I am exhausted with trying to keep up with the number
of students I have to assess. We were slow for time because I let the students give feedback
to each presenter which I should have minimised to stay on time. A few students in my class
were unfinished or forgot their presentation. As I was behind on time, I couldn’t address
these people properly to talk about consequences and the lack of effort or respect they
have towards the assignment to not be organised or ready on the due date (this has been
approximately over a month unit so they should have known better with previous
assignments and the year level they are in). I know I will have students that will need to
present tomorrow and I hope I can quickly get through these students so I can mark the
other two classes as-well.
Some students didn’t want to present in-front of the class and so we decided on a teacher-
student presentation in their own time. I am concerned about this because not all teachers
would agree to students presenting one-on-one and that students do need to practice oral
speech skills to overcome worry or anxiety towards speaking in-front of peers and the
teacher. I was really happy with how I approached a situation with a student who was
feeling overwhelmed and nervous about her presentation. Instead of standing in-front of
me and formally talking, I asked her to sit next to me and just chat to me about what she
had produced and if she was okay with me asking her some questions about her project. I
think I went about this in the right way because afterwards, I let her know that she did
fantastic and that she shouldn’t need to worry about speaking because she was very strong
and passionate with her words. I told her it is something that most students need to work
on, and she will get better the more she practices. I felt a stronger connection form with this
student and I’m happy I had this opportunity to build on our teacher-student relationship.

Thursday 2nd July

The students who forgot or were unfinished with Health yesterday had to be questioned
and penalised. To discourage student fear about their assignments, I told them that they
needed to be honest to me instead of hiding the fact they couldn’t present. Because of their
falsehood, I did give them a fine and for those who still were unfinished had until the end of
lunch to work and present (they had to work at recess and lunch). I want to foster more
honesty/integrity with the students so they can be open with me and not see me just as an
authority figure that would punish them or follow with consequences. However, this doesn’t
exactly align with my mentor teacher or the school’s idea of behaviour toward serious
academic work. I had more students present at recess and lunch with their Health
assignment. Although this shows my commitment as a teacher to get all the assessments
done, I also need a break like the students do which is what recess and lunch is for. There
was one student that presented at the end of lunch. I was very surprised by his display
board that was rushed and still looked incomplete. I already knew that he would fail from
the poster section because he would not meet the requirements with labelling and overall
visual appeal. I know that I am not to compare student work from one to another, but
although this student excelled his oral part of the presentation, I can’t dismiss the low level
of quality with his poster which cannot reach satisfactory. I also have to reduce his mark
further from being turned in late which I agreed with my mentor would be 20 marks. The
overall mark for this student was 24/100 which is unbelievably low, and I really want him to
take this as a turning point towards how he approaches assignments for the future. When I
mark student work under satisfactory, I do feel a bit like a villain, and I hope this doesn’t
affect the way they do think of me as a teacher and the relationships I have made with these
students. I have to remind myself that I gave these students time and information that
would help them succeed in this assignment, and it is their responsibility on the path they
take that can lead to positive or negative outcomes. There are more factors than just my
teaching on what can happen with student’s assignment results.

Friday 3rd July

The morning was busy with completing Room 111’s assessment and being the last day of
Term 2. As Layla was the pre-service teacher in Room 111 (team teaching in our shared
classroom), we shared the assessments because I wouldn’t have been able to finish all of
them before the holidays to mark. She marked them on their oral presentations, and I
marked on the display board and orals of the students. This worked really well, and we did
successfully mark all students in the timeframe. I was super impressed by the students’
outcomes with this project for this class because they definitely needed the extra time to
refine their work. This will be amazing evidence for my portfolio to showcase the excellent
work that was achieved.

There were two incidents with students that I learnt from with our Health assignments. The
first student was moving schools and Miss Kim had said he started to disengage weeks ago
because he didn’t see the point of finishing work when he had a new start to look forward
to in Term 3. He had come up to me and said, “Miss Svilans I haven’t finished Health,
goodbye”, and I surprised him when I replied, “Wait a minute B, you will still present today
the work you have done like everyone else has/is this morning”. I don’t think he was ready
or expected this response which made me feel powerful that he had been trying to get away
with this from other teachers but not me. He did present and tried to say anything he could
make up from his head which definitely showed as he used very casual words, jumped from
idea to idea, and used words such as, “um, ah, hm” to slow his pace. I did stop him and told
him no matter what might be happening in the future, he needs to still focus on the now
and finish assignments strong and put the effort in. His disengagement translated through
this project and that is why he was below satisfactory with his overall mark. I don’t think he
was very fazed by his mark or what I said, but I do hope he changes going into his new
school.

The other student, who didn’t have an extension (those who had missed lessons), was
unfinished with her project even with the extra time with everyone else in the class. Miss
Kim and I both talked to her about how her constant behaviour and actions have been
displeasing. She never communicates struggles or ideas about projects and always hands
them up late. This was extremely frustrating for me because I wouldn’t be able to do
anything about this until Term 3 which is two weeks away. We finally came to a conclusion
that she would present in week 1. Afterwards, she returned to her desk and played the
victim by crying to her friends. This fuelled my anger because there was no one to blame but
herself for leaving this to the last minute and not talking Miss Kim or myself about wanting
support or help when I had offered it in lessons.
I am so relieved it is holiday time, but I know I will have to work hard to finish the marking,
my TPA’s, and other assignments in this time. I’m counting down the time until I will become
a teacher myself and I am looking forward to the new goals and journey that will come.

Week 7

- I did an activity with students to write constructive feedback on a piece of butcher’s

paper that will guide me with the improvements I need with my professional
development as a teacher. I did not agree with some of the comment’s students
made, but can see where I should have done instruction, management, or activities
differently. For example, some students said that I shouldn’t have put new learning
in Mental Math because it was more like a warm-up than a lesson. However, if I put
content in that students already know, then there is no new learning happening and
is more-so a waste of 30 minutes for students to be actively engaging in a lesson. I
recognised that when I put something new in Mental that I knew most students
wouldn’t have understood, I should have given them a formula or the layout of
processes to find the answer. This would set them up for success and improve the
learning outcomes for students to achieve.
- One day when Mr Hal was trying to work with student A, he did not want to comply
at all. I then took over and Mr Hal worked with other students, and amazingly
student A flipped and was happy to work through the different sections of English
with myself. Although student A should have worked with Mr Hal in the first place,
this really showed the progression in the relationship between student A and me. I
felt special that he didn’t want to work with another teacher, but he did with me. I
was thrilled with the change in behaviour student A has shown over this week for
Term 3 because he is more willing and upbeat in his demeanour to work together
with his learning.
- The student who was given an extension because she wasn’t ready at the end of
Term 2 was absent on the day that she was meant to present, and it was my last day
as-well. I did have a feeling this was going to happen and was a bit crushed that this
student just really didn’t want to do this assignment. I talked to Miss Kim about what
more could we do since I wouldn’t be returning next week. She said she would be
able to notify the parents of this student on the outcomes of this assignment (a fail
because of the multiple chances that were given and missed due to individual
decisions made). I wish I could have done more so there was a different outcome
with this student but for this last week, it just wasn’t possible.
- We had a relief teacher for the Thursday who was in the running for the position at
the school as the Science Coordinator which was given to one of the year 6/7
teachers. I was shocked about the teaching style he took with our class. He was very
strict on having no noise in the class and had quite a stone expression that conveyed
 anger and frustration to me. He would always wait for everyone to give him
attention and wouldn’t talk until this happened. Personally, I felt afraid of him which
I could sense from some of the students as-well and I do not feel this teaching style
was very fitting for a well-behaved class that we had. When Mr Hal or I talked to him,
he was very nice and smiley, but was a whole different person in-front of the
students. I did give this type of feedback to Mrs L because she had told me that the
school is looking for quality TRT’s that the students and teachers want.
- My last day was really amazing and I am so thankful for the students and mentor
that I had for my last placement. I have learnt so much that I will definitely take into
my last semester of university and into my teaching career. I know I only have one
last semester and everything over the years has been building to this moment. I
need to finish strong and aspire to learn more when I am a teacher to maintain the
passion I have for this career.