The week we’ve all been waiting for, week one of the university semester, is finally here!
This semester, I will be focussing on the following areas of my English Curriculum Studies unit for development:
- Building in more support for student reflective writing. The design of my lesson planning assignment last year included a tutorial presentation of the key teaching strategies, but it didn’t really work that well. So I plan to change this element of the assessment to a written reflection, and add two targeted activities to tutorials in mid-semester to more constructively scaffold the task.
- Finding places to make connections between English curriculum studies content knowledge and other professional frameworks. In particular I want to ensure that students understand how the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers can be used to self-diagnose areas of strength and directions for further learning, and are knowledgable about the Productive Pedgagogies framework that is advocated by Education Queensland.
- Registration. After three years of running this unit it will be time to write up the final unit design, as well as a ‘scope and sequence’, so that the unit is ready to be passed on. At school we called this ‘registration’ – when the Head Teacher would check out your unit plans at the end of the semester and ensure you met your learning objectives. Here at uni there are other other mechanisms in place, but the Head Teacher check isn’t one of them. And official changes are made so sllllloooowwwlyyyy. So, for my own piece of mind, I’m going to put my own unit through a final tick-and-flick, then prepare my reflections and field notes for scholarly publication and sharing.
I’ve included below another classroom poster I’ve made, a visual resource to support my students’ engagement with the Productive Pedagogies – feel free to use and share (though note that the values/opinions expressed on it about alignment with ‘prac’ are only my own POV!).
Now…deep breath!
And once more into the breach!
Productive Pedagogies for Prac (image by Kelli, CC-BY-SA)
Kelli McGraw 
#1 by biancah80 on February 27, 2013 - 9:26 pm
Oh, Kelli! I love the unicorn!! I love the use of a visual like this … gonna steal this idea for my students, I think … yay.
#2 by kmcg2375 on March 5, 2013 - 11:03 pm
Steal away! There is even a story behind the unicorn…
One of the students in the class was really committed to study – she always had managed to do ALL the readings, and do all the assessments early, and she had little kids too! Our class that semester was small and friendly, and so this student ended up with the nickname ‘the unicorn’, because the other students decided she was like a mythical, magical, impossible creature, amazing to them, like a unicorn 🙂
#3 by biancah80 on March 8, 2013 - 9:49 pm
awww – love it!
#4 by Katie Nightingale (@matiekorgan) on March 2, 2013 - 3:50 pm
I want to be in your class!
#5 by kmcg2375 on March 5, 2013 - 11:04 pm
You are welcome to come and hang out any time 😀
#6 by been on March 4, 2013 - 11:19 pm
Hey there! I’ve been following your blog for a long time now and finally got the bravery to go ahead and give you a shout out from Huffman Texas! Just wanted to mention keep up the great job!
#7 by kmcg2375 on March 5, 2013 - 11:06 pm
Wow, thanks for the encouragement!