Joanne Zeaiter

ID: 19862415

Secondary Professional Practice 1 Reflection

Report

For my first practicum, I was placed at Liverpool Girls’ High School; an all-girls
comprehensive high school situated in the suburb of Liverpool. I was allocated to year 7, 8,
10 and 12 classes for my key learning area in Music. During my experience, I was able to
experiment with various pedagogical theories and implement effective learning strategies
which enhanced the way I approach structuring lessons and engaging with the students.

Some of the most challenging moments I faced during my practicum was finding ways to
improve my behaviour management strategies. Although my studies in Secondary Education
have taught me the importance of behaviour management within the classroom, being able
to actually work with students who are not interested in doing the class activities or
assignments proved to be very difficult. This was especially the case concerning 10M1, a
class which my mentor teacher warned consisted primarily of misbehaved students who
were disengaged from the lessons and often finding ways to disrespect the teacher. It was
clear that this year 10 class did not respond well to conventional or restricting methods of
classroom management. Introducing individual work also did not yield results as the
students became more determined to disrupt the lesson by socialising and using their
mobile phones. Moving seats and confiscating technological devices also seemed to make
the students more hostile. I instead integrated the use of mobile phones within an activity
leading up to their assignment (with my supervision), allowing the students to research a
composer for themselves using guided scaffolds that would be uploaded as a blog to then
be peer evaluated. I further suggested to my mentor teacher that we should change the
assignment to be one which they could complete in groups; the assignment would include a
section where they would have to justify their decisions towards the final product in terms
of peer collaboration and personal connection to the work. I was very happy with the results
as I was told that all students/groups handed in their assignments which included the girls
who have hardly completed assessments the entire year. This strategy is seen through the
structures of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) which work to improve both a student’s
academic standards and their ethical behaviours (Zins, et al, 2006). I used SEL’s idea of peer
culture and social interactions to direct the attitudes of the student to responsibly negotiate
amongst themselves/educators and thus positively respond to their education.

Planning engaging lessons using differentiated strategies was another significant aspect of
my practicum experience. Liverpool Girls’ High School has a considerable amount of ESL
students, which meant that effective differentiated planning was necessary in creating
inclusive classroom environments. I found that 7M5 (which had many ESL students) for the
first two lessons I had with them were not willing to participate in both the theory and
practical lessons due to not being confident with their music understanding. I also found
that the students were not interested in the song selections which my mentor teacher
suggested they learn. With my mentor teacher’s guidance, I hence allowed for the students
to choose a song which they would perform as a class as I believed they would be more
eager to learn a piece that they genuinely wanted to learn. I also gave students the choice to
decide whether they would spend a whole lesson on music theory or spend time working on
their performance depending on their behaviour, which was measured on the board (if their
behaviour was at 5 stars, then they would spend the last 20 minutes of the lesson on the
keyboards). This enabled the students to become more motivated to both complete and
understand the theory work. For students who had more difficulty with the performance, I
provided clear, coloured notated music sheets that also showed a picture diagram of the
chord with the keys highlighted. To accompany this, I also displayed the chords to be played
on multimodal PowerPoint presentations as well as giving them demonstrations. For the
students who learnt the chords quickly, I gave them the choice to continue with the melody
line or learning the lyrics to the song. William Glasser’s ‘Choice Theory’ posits that human
choices are driven by the five basic needs of Survival, Power, Belonging, Freedom and Fun
(De Nobile, Lyons & Arthur-Kelly, 2017). This theory allowed me to implement the
differentiated methods effectively as the students were given the freedom to explore and
extend their own ability depending on their level of understanding instead of having the
teacher decide for them.
Lastly, enhancing my ability to use effective feedback for student performance was a
significant aspect of my practicum experience which transformed my perception of
teaching. Within my observation week, my mentor teacher allowed me to assess the year 11
(11M1) performances and write constructive criticism/feedback for each student. This was
an interesting experience as it meant that I would have an idea of each students’ abilities
before becoming their teacher in the following weeks. At first, the students were nervous
about receiving their marks and reading the feedback; however, I understood their
nervousness as they had just transitioned to being year 12 students. It was difficult to make
the students comfortable with performing in front of me for the first week. I hence decided
to dedicate one lesson a week to conducting performance workshops, which included both
instrument training and one on one lessons with each student to record progress and
highlight improvement. This strategy was successful as the students became more confident
in their performance capabilities and even resulted in all fifteen girls being able to perform
in front of the class in my last lesson with them (which is something that my mentor teacher
has said most of them have never done before). I utilised the idea of ‘mastery goals’ (which
stems from Rudolph Dreikurs’ ‘Goal Theory’) to teach the students the importance of self-
improvement rather than ‘performance goals’ which have students become dethatched
from lessons when their results are not what they were expecting. (Deemer, 2004, pp. 5)
This strategy posits that the dimensions of task, authority, recognition, grouping, evaluation
and time are tools that all attribute to how a student responds to classwork and feedback.
For example, I allowed the students to establish a sense of personal control over their own
performance and academic priorities.

To conclude, my first practicum experience allowed me to better understand my own

teaching pedagogical style. I was hence able to refine my strategies and ultimately create
meaningful connections with my students and colleagues.
References:

Deemer, S. (2004). USING ACHIEVEMENT GOAL THEORY TO TRANSLATE PSYCHOLOGICAL

PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE IN THE SECONDARY CLASSROOM. American Secondary
Education, 32(3), 4-15.

De Nobile, J., Lyons, G., & Arthur-Kelly, M. (2017). Positive learning environments: creating
and maintaining productive classrooms. Cengage AU.

Zins, J., Bloodworth, M., Weissberg, R., & Walberg, H. (2007). The Scientific Base Linking
Social and Emotional Learning to School Success. Journal of Educational and
Psychological Consultation, 17(2-3), 191-210.