Teacher

Organisation: New South Wales Department of Education

Job Title:  Teacher

Word Limit: One page per criterion

Location: Various

Approval to teach K – 6

With over three years of experience as a Teacher, I am a skilled educator who promotes strong academic and social development of students throughout early and middle childhood. My approval to teach K-6 is supported by a Master of Teaching (Primary), with the ability to teach any grade (K-6) in a wide range of educational settings. I am a dedicated Teacher who values innovation and the implementation of meaningful learning experiences that assist students to develop the necessary skills to succeed later in life. This has been demonstrated through

• Basing my teaching on the New South Wales Quality Teaching model and the Principles of Learning and Teaching to ensure effective teaching pedagogy. This leads to pedagogy that is based on promoting high levels of intellectual quality, a quality learning environment, and that develops and makes explicit to students the significance of their work. For example, when delivering mathematics lessons, I ensure that the content is relevant and tasks achievable for all learners. This often means grouping students into levels of ability such as below level, at level and above level. In doing so, I am able to provide extension activities for students above level, and provide ongoing support to students below level. My ability to do so was evidenced during a lesson focused on mathematical array and I engaged at and above level students in creating their own chocolate blocks, demonstrating the possibility of different arrays. As the below level students were having difficulty grasping the concept, I worked with them on basic concepts such as sharing, using an analogy of serving meatballs. This was something that they could easily relate to, and was a simple representation of multiplication concepts. As a result, all students were engaged in the learning activity and grasped a strong understanding of the key learning area.
• Working collaboratively with other Stage Teachers in programming to plan for the delivery of syllabus content and improve student learning outcomes. Within my current role at Glendenning Public School as a Grade 2 Classroom Teacher, I have worked with other teachers to develop units of work, resources and assessments in order to moderate the grade to assist with assessing what each point the students were at across the grade. This enabled up to present sequences of learning that took into account prior and subsequent learning of students, whilst having a thorough understanding of the skills and knowledge expected to be acquired by most students by the end of a unit. Having key reference points for decisions about students’ progress and achievement facilitated ease of the assessment process, and collaboratively developing and sharing resources ensured consistency across the grade. Furthermore, the partnership, professional reflection and evaluation of this task afforded me the opportunity to enhance my professional practice and knowledge as a teacher.
• Utilising assessment for learning, assessment as learning and assessment of learning to gather evidence about student achievement and to improve student learning. I use a variety of strategies to assess each student’s work, including observing their work in class, engaging them in discussion, keeping anecdotal records and looking closely at the work that they produce throughout the year. Additionally, I engage students in one-on-one conferencing where I assess and discuss their work samples. At Glendenning Public School, we utilise a stamp system to facilitate this, where there are three types of stamps in the categories of ‘checked by teacher’, ‘verbal feedback provided’, and ‘star, star, wish’. The final stamp provides me with the opportunity to give positive feedback to students on two aspects of their work (‘star, star’), as well as discuss with them what they could improve on or do better next time (‘wish’). This process ties in with the learning intentions and success criteria of the lesson or unit of work. As a result, I am able to gauge each student’s ability, level of understanding and whether they need extension or support, thus enabling me to inform my future teaching.
• Engaging in ongoing professional development. I am a reflective teacher who evaluates my practice constantly. This includes frequently value-adding to my professional practice, and looking at ways to improve student learning, classroom management and my effectiveness as a teacher. One of the most recent development sessions that I completed involved learning about the classroom habitudes of 21^st Century learners based on the behaviours, habits and attitudes that will equip students for success both inside and outside of the classroom. Promoting things such as imagination, curiosity, perseverance, self-awareness, courage and adaptability are all imperative for 21^st Century learning, and this training has equipped me with the knowledge to effectively teach these habitudes through my teaching pedagogy.

As a Teacher at SCHOOL NAME, I will continue to demonstrate my understanding of effective teaching strategies in order to ensure the provision of quality learning for all students. By fostering student engagement through high quality learning experiences that are shaped by a value for critical thinking and creative problem solving, I will provide all students with the opportunity to achieve a lifelong love of learning.

Demonstrated excellence in classroom practice, and the ability to implement a differentiated curriculum to meet the literacy and numeracy needs of a highly diverse student body

With the ability to recognise the interrelationship between teaching, learning and assessment that informs future teaching and learning, I implement a differentiated curriculum to meet the literacy and numeracy needs of a highly diverse student body. Students are individuals who learn at different rates and in different ways. These individual differences may influence how students respond to instruction and how they demonstrate what they know, understand and can do. As such, through differentiated planning and programming, I can consider students’ varying abilities, learning styles, interests and needs. This has been demonstrated through

• Facilitating group and independent learning activities. Within my current Grade 2 class at Glendenning Public School, I deliver reading and writing lessons according to students’ levels and ability to read, comprehend and write. For example, during a recent writing task focusing on the literacy cycle, I discussed and wrote the learning intention and success criteria on the board. Next, I engaged students in a variety of activities according to their abilities. This involved the confident students with higher abilities working individually to write a poem. For those students who were working at level, I provided them with additional guidance and instruction prior to them commencing the same task. With the lower ability students, I had them work in a group together and I broke down the structure of a poem, and then asked them all to contribute one aspect each. This ended with them working collaboratively to construct a poem. As a result of my differentiation of the task, I effectively met the needs of all students to facilitate their learning, whilst providing them with alternative methods and choices to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and skills at a level that they were comfortable with.
• Making modifications to instruction and student groupings. As a Teacher, I provide instructional concepts that are broad based and ensure that all students are provided with access to the same core content. However, I adapt the content’s complexity according to students’ learner profiles. As such, I ensure that I provide learning activities in which students engage to make sense of or master the content such as through scaffolding, flexible grouping, and encouraging advanced learners to pursue a topic in greater depth. This was clearly demonstrated during one of my mathematics lessons where I was teaching students about subtraction. Subsequent to presenting the key learning areas, I engaged students in three separate learning activities according to their level of ability. This included providing further instruction to students below level and asking them to work with counters, providing students at level with number line activities, and extending students that were above level with word problems. During the activity, I ensured that I roamed the room to assess students’ progress and to provide further instruction and prompts to students who were struggling. In providing differentiation, I do not lower my expectations for the lower ability students; instead, I recognise their individual instructional needs and aim for all students to reach the standards mandated for their grade level.
• Implementing Personalised Learning Plans. My experience in differentiating the curriculum extends to developing and implementing Personalised Learning Plans (PLP) for students who require additional support to access the full range of education opportunities and to achieve success. Covering all areas of literacy, numeracy and student behaviour, the PLPs provide access to specialist services and programs targeted for individual students, as well as programs that provide specialist resources to support students experiencing difficulties. Working with the student, their parents or carers, and other support people, I clearly map the pathway that a student needs to follow to achieve learning goals commensurate with the standards expected for all students. This includes a clear destination for the student in terms of goals for learning, potential obstacles that might impede the student reaching their goals, and a plan for working through them. This enables me to work directly on issues that are affecting the student’s performance, engages the student in their own learning and provides an achievable opportunity for the student to improve their attendance, engagement and/or academic performance.
• Developing individual learning goals. Particularly for higher achieving students, I ensure that I set them their own individual goals so that they have the opportunity to strive for excellence. Using the ‘star, star, wish’ stamp system at Glendenning Public School, allows me to focus students on a new ‘wish’ or goal each time we conference regarding their work. This could include things such as me asking the student to try and incorporate more adverbs or adjectives, speech marks or text references. Doing so allows me to extend students abilities whilst fostering their intellectual and personal development toward academic success and lifelong learning.

As a Teacher at SCHOOL NAME I am confident that my experience and knowledge of how students learn, will enable me to make skilled observations of students’ literacy and numeracy capabilities, and implement differentiated instruction that builds on what students know, and results in engagement and positive student learning outcomes.

A demonstrated understanding of the 21st century fluencies, and ability to implement innovative technology based programs for quality teaching and learning

Within my classroom, I provide a rich, innovative environment that reflects quality teaching and learning, whilst providing opportunities for interaction that facilitates 21^st Century learning. My lessons engage, encourage, support and guide students to expand significant intellectual knowledge and thinking through whole-class, group and individual activities designed to develop an inquiring mind and teach basic learning skills needed for schooling and later life. This is demonstrated through

• Encouraging imagination and creativity within the learning environment. In order to encourage students’ desire to learn, I ensure that they are magnetised by a new idea or concept and are compelled to explore further. This is achieved within my classroom by providing students with adequate guidance while affording them opportunities for exploration, including implementing a ‘wonder wall’ at the commencement of each new unit. The wonder wall focuses strongly on inquiry-based learning and is a place where groups of questions can be modelled, recorded, shared and encouraged, and as students discover answers to their questions, they can be marked off and more can be added. For example, subsequent to introducing a new unit focused on environments and discussing the key learning areas, I engaged students in a question session. This involved asking students what they already knew about different types of environments, what they wanted to know, and how we might find out. What students wanted to know were placed on the wonder wall for us to explore as we moved through the unit. The wonder wall encourages students to ‘think outside the box’ as it is an evolving learning space that encourages curiosity, inquiry skills and openness within the class.
• Providing students with opportunities to develop critical thinking. My teaching experience has demonstrated to me that students develop critical and creative thinking by seeking new pathways or solutions when they evaluate knowledge, ideas and possibilities. As such, I provide students with opportunities to think in ways that are critical and creative using information, ideas and arguments to evaluate their own work and the work of others, as well as planning for future learning. I facilitate this by engaging students in a reflection activity at the end of each day where we discuss how well students participated, the strategies that they used to engage in the lesson, and what they did to achieve the key learning outcome. Additionally, we discuss how well they performed in regards to the day’s success criteria, and what they might do to improve their learning next time. As a result, students build skills in reasoning, logic, imagination and innovation. In learning to think broadly and deeply students use reason and imagination to direct their thinking for different purposes.
• Fostering a learning environment focused on collaboration. In order to assist students to develop higher order thinking skills, increase student self-esteem and enhance their satisfaction with their learning experiences, I work closely with them in setting goals. I have found this to work effectively with students displaying learning or behavioural difficulties, and encourage them to work with me to set explicit and achievable goals. This can include providing a student with one task to work on over the course of a week, for example ensuring that all worksheets are completed during class. We then have a conference meeting a week later to discuss achievements and I provide the student with a suitable reward if success has been attained. Dong so fosters a team approach to problem solving, while ensuring that students maintain individual accountability for their behaviour and learning.
• The application of technology tools and resources to support teaching, learning and assessment. Due to working within a school in a low socioeconomic area, I have not yet been afforded the opportunity to work with a wide variety of technology; however I have worked effectively with the resources that I have been provided with. This has included utilising the interactive whiteboard to extend learning opportunities and curriculum breadth for all students. For example, when focusing on spelling, I will engage students in fun and interactive spelling games on the whiteboard. The use of activities such as these facilitates multisensory learning and results in students that are fully engaged. Moreover, due not having access to computers for students, I utilise the interactive whiteboard as a workable instructional model through utilising websites, photographs, music and video clips that students can interact with and respond verbally to. This was demonstrated during an activity in which I demonstrated to students how to conduct their own independent research at home through using Google and other search engines. In addition to theoretical knowledge, I was able to provide students with a visual demonstration that assisted reinforcing the process.

As a Teacher at SCHOOL NAME, I am confident that my understanding of the 21^st Century fluencies and ability to implement innovative technology based programs for quality teaching and learning will equip students with the capacity to think, solve problems, respond to and th