Key Selection Criteria - Ksc

Ms. Melissa Forrest

“Melissa has developed an acute ability to reflect on her practice as part of her ongoing professional development. She appreciates the importance of teaching in ways which respond to student characteristics and learning styles/needs.”- Dr. Wee Tiong Seah, Monash University Placement Adviser. To encourage high standards of education for our students, the Victorian government have produced a number of educational frameworks, with the purpose to assist schools, and teachers, to create appropriate, superior, and engaging curriculum, consequently to facilitate a productive and meaningful learning experience for each student. The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians is one of the frameworks, which can assist schools and teachers to devise new and enriching curriculum objectives, with a focus on more holistic development of each individual learner. It provides a focused framework for teachers to plan, and implement new curriculum and pedagogical practice, and relevant assessment strategies, resulting in the encouragement of student performance and engagement within the curriculum’s subject matter. The Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) is another imperative foundation for developing the content of curriculum and assessment strategies in schools. The standards provide teachers with understandings of what to plan in their curriculum, and provide strategies to incorporate into their planning for educating the broad range of learning styles within all classrooms. Throughout the duration of my degree and in the course of each teaching practicum, I have had intensive experience with the document, and have always linked my lessons and their anticipated student learning outcomes to the relevant Strand, Domain and Dimensions with the topic and VELS level for the students, concurrently keeping in mind the reflective nature of VELS progression points and the Principles of Learning and Teaching as a guide for assessment. The Assessment and Reporting advice provided by these frameworks ensures that the high standards of education are being met by the students while provides several modes of analytical data to draw on implemented units of work, and assists with planning for individual and diverse learning needs when planning and implementing new curriculum. I am highly engaged with the educational frameworks, and am mindful of the need to adopt my own style to cater for effective teaching and assessment within my own class.

My Professional Practice: Through my tuition and practical experiences, I have been able to employ my understanding to curriculum and assessment by use of these approaches through: • •

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My participation in university subjects and assessment tasks, which all required my examination, reflection and implementation of the Victorian Essential Learning Standards and Principles of Learning and Teaching frameworks. My practical placements, predominantly in my fourth year internship placement, provided me with valuable opportunities to observe my supervising teacher’s implementation of VELS and PoLT, together with providing me with a forum to apply the frameworks into group and individual planning and development of term units and lesson plans. Through individual lesson plans I have had intensive experience with VELS, and have used this planner to link my lessons and their anticipated learning outcomes to the relevant Strand, Domain and Dimensions with the topic and VELS level appropriate for the students. In my practical placements, I incorporated the elements of a Thinking Curriculum into my teaching: including Gardiner’s Multiple Intelligences, De Bono’s thinking hats, and Bloom’s Taxonomy throughout learning sequences. During teaching practicals, and after I administer lessons in a classroom, I critically reflect upon my teaching practices and pedagogical understandings using the components of PoLT, to ensure I am providing my students with quality and efficient leaning experiences. During my placement blocks, I have observed, administered and collected assessment pieces, such as; assessment rubrics, writing samples, and tables, which show student progression and understandings of various topics. The majority of these pieces conform to the VELS progression points.

Key Selection Criteria

What I will bring to your school: In order to work effectively, putting my understandings into practice to highlearning quality pedagogy for my students, I KSC1: Demonstrated knowledge of initiatives inprovide student including the will work collaboratively and proficiently with the other teaching staff to ensure that the learning environments and teaching Standards, the Principles of Learning and Teaching P-12 and Assessment and practices I am implementing are reflecting the values of the above frameworks. I believe that working together as a team Reporting Advice the ability design curriculum programs consistent theirto provides beneficial and learningand opportunities for alltowho are involved, and allows professionals to supportwith each other intent. provide paramount pedagogical experiences to engage their class. Furthermore, by engaging in a strong and supportive team of professionals, teachers can provide challenging and engaging curricula for students. I am eager to participate in your strong team environment, and look forward to sharing my own ideas about putting VELS and PoLT and methods of Assessment into action, to ensure our student achieve success in their learning.

“She capably planned to cater for a wide range of students and her classroom management at all times was excellent.” – Lyn Kay, Mullum Primary School In the classroom, all children possess many diverse learning styles and each convey unique views and understandings to every topic that is covered within the curriculum. It is the role of the teacher to provide responsive practices to cater for all student diversities, and encompass individual learning styles into their planning for quality learning. Consequently, it is a teacher’s responsibility to acutely comprehend each of our students’ skills, prior knowledge and experiences in order to educate and engage them in a productive manner. For this it is important to be mindful of numerous strategies, which can be drawn on in order to meet students’ personal needs and to maximise learning potential and engagement within their study. Therefore, to meet the needs of all students, it is my belief that teachers are required to administer constant reflection and employ authentic assessment of the progression of each student to adequately implement personal and constructive leaning opportunities. By working with colleagues to aim for inclusive teaching, it provides teachers with the ability to share and experiment with their ideas, while assessing their individual practices to provide an inclusive and relevant curriculum for their students. During my final placement at Vermont Primary School, I had the opportunity to work in a strong and collaborative team at Level One. By observing and participating in this team, it has further extended my knowledge and understandings about planning and teaching for individual learning styles.

My Professional Practice: Through my tuition and practical experiences, I have been able to employ my understandings of student learning, effective classroom teaching strategies and working with colleagues to improve teaching and learning through: •

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I have undertaken university units of study, extending my understandings of how students learn in individual modes. An example of my practical employment of the strategies was facilitated through my university Science unit. The unit incorporated an assignment that required the development of a unit of science lessons about ‘Students Exploring Science’. Through these lessons, I was required to implement strategies and scientific activities and experiments, designed to engage diverse learning styles, through the use of Howard Gardiner’s Multiple Intelligences model. I implemented these lessons at Karingal Primary School in a Level 4 classroom. These lessons proved to be a very successful implementation of reflection of my individual teaching practices of teaching in general and for my teaching to student’s personal learning styles. During my final year internship placement at Vermont Primary School, I planned and implemented weekly lessons in accordance with the unit curriculum topic of ‘Living things’, designed in accordance with VELS and the level one, term three curriculum, promoting a Problem-Based Learning approach for the students to be in partnership with myself, (the teacher), to make their learning authentic and tangible, and promote independent learners for their future education and life. In my final placement, I had the opportunity to incorporate a Multiliteracies approach of immersion by using authentic modern text-types for each of the unit topics. Through use of the Interactive White Board, my lessons incorporated interactive web sites, relevant video clips, and student Wiki pages relating to the term topics, ensuring provisions of different learning opportunities that are relevant to the culture of today’s students. At Vermont Primary, I also undertook a very interesting, hands-on Level One, Mathematics Professional KSC2: session, Demonstrate anbyunderstanding how students learn and effective Development presented Michael Yemar, to of cater for the diverse methods students learn mathematics.

classroom teaching strategies and the capacity to work with colleagues to What I will bring to your school: continually improve teaching and learning.

When planning for individual learning styles and an effective, responsive teaching within a learning classroom, it requires teachers to be able to employ numerous strategies to successfully cater for all diversities. As a Graduate teacher in your school, I would strive to further develop my skills and understandings of catering for diversities in learning styles. I will be comfortable to seek advice from my fellow colleagues about their experiences with this in their classrooms, and would encourage their feedback about my practices and strategies, with no hesitations to trial new approaches that may be suggested and discussed.

“Melissa consistently sort to understand where each student was at with their learning and use this information to plan lessons. She provided on the spot feedback and encouragement and regularly sort feedback in this area, an excellent job!” – Helen Trewavas, Vermont Primary School. Assessment of student learning is an essential element of quality and effective education, especially when catering for diverse learning strategies. It provides teachers, and parents, with data as a reflective tool to measure the effectiveness of the curriculum content and teaching practices being implemented in the classroom, to identify the level of understanding that each student has achieved from the pedagogy, and allows for the continual improvement of student outcomes in their learning. Therefore it is the responsibility of the teacher to implement a variety of ongoing assessment techniques, involving each student, in order to achieve authentic assessment results for individuals, and an accurate outline of each individual student’s progression though the curriculum content. Assessment can be accessed in three different phases; • Formative Assessment – or assessment for learning, which is often used to inform the teaching which is being implemented or for the following step in the teaching process, • Summative Assessment – or assessment of learning, which identifies what the student may achieve in the near future and is often a useful example for reports. • Assessment as learning - which provides opportunities for the students to self assess their own knowledge and understandings, and is fundamental in encouraging students to set their own learning goals and take responsibility for their individual learning in future tasks.

My Professional Practice: Through my tuition and practical experiences, I have been able to employ my understandings of assessment and monitoring students learning for improvement by; • During my final year internship placement at Vermont Primary School, throughout the year, I have continuously observed my mentor teacher implementing formal and informal assessment with all the students of the grade. • From the same placement, I observed my mentor teacher administering the formal Early Numeracy Interview with a number of the prep students in the grade. • I have developed a portfolio of example assessment tools we used during the year for Level One, with items including: the 100 Common word checklists, Letter Identification test sheets, Work samples, taken and assessed with rubrics create from VELS progression points for Level one, and a PROBE test administered for a gifted student in English. • Throughout other practical placements, I have implemented lessons, which have allocated ‘reflection time’ for the students to brainstorm what they have learnt from the lesson, or discuss their learning using a PMI (plus, minus, interesting/improvement) approach, while moderating with other experienced teachers to ensure my assessment is consistent across the students’ year level. • I have undertaken many assessment tasks at Monash University, which have required my development of assessment pieces which I could implement within a classroom setting, to encourage student understanding. For each of these assessments, I have and received high grades for their achievements. KSC3. Capacity to monitor assess student learning data and to use this data to

inform teaching for improved student learning. What I will bring to your school: As a graduate in your school, I will endeavour to apply my experiences with assessment and learning, and ensure a variety of ongoing assessment practices are implemented within my classroom. I will maintain comprehensive documentation of formal and informal assessment items, and will utilise this data to inform implemented curriculum and my teaching practices, while keeping in mind the Key learning Areas and values of student learning outcomes in accordance to the VELS progression points. With the support from my experienced colleagues, I believe I would be able to develop and refine comprehensive assessment method to effectively assess for quality learning.

“At all times, Melissa presented herself in a professional manner. She has excellent and effective communication skills. Melissa developed an instant rapport with both students and staff.” – Annette Lindsay, Templeton Primary School. Positive connections are the foundation for all professional relationships. It is essential for positive relationships to be constructed between teachers, students, parents, and fellow colleagues to assist with crating forthcoming successful learning communities within the classroom. The Melbourne Declaration of Educational Goals for Young Australians declares that the partnerships between such stakeholders in education provide mutual benefits and maximises student engagement and achievement in completed tasks. Not only does a positive relationship facilitate encouraging outcomes, it allows for effective communication for teachers to express their expectations of student, collaborate with their colleagues, share information with parents and guardians of their students, and model the skills and knowledge to students. In my experiences during teaching and in my current and previous places of employment, to assist with building positive relationships within the classroom, and with students on an individual level, teachers must maintain an encouraging, respectful and caring nature when interacting with their students. By creating a respectful, non-threatening and open environment for all students within the classroom, this paves the way for students to excel in their learning experiences and participate in all activities without fear of having the wrong answer. Additionally, from prior teaching experiences, I have observed that having positive relationships and interactions with fellow colleagues provides an enriching and elevating effect on the other members of staff, promoting friendly, open and lively working environments that people engage with and perform more effectively through.

My Professional Practice: My communication and written skills are highly accomplished and have been excelled as a result of my university studies and through my professional placement experiences. I have demonstrated this through: • Spending time getting to know the students, and the staff members as individuals on my placement, thereby becoming aware of their personalities, culture and experiences they bring to the classroom and to the school. • While on Practical placements I aimed to connect and communicate with the parents of students within my grade to discuss any issues, expectations or concerns they may have about their child and their schooling, consequently providing advice or strategies, such as behaviour management strategies where appropriate and if asked for. • Observing the need for continuous communication with students and parents regarding matters, therefore I plan to implement a weekly class newsletter to inform families of what we will be learning for the week, reminders and current happenings within the classroom. • I have worked effectively with peers and colleagues to plan and implement collaborative projects in relation to curriculum and university assignments.

KSC4. high level written and verbal communication skills and high level What I willDemonstrated bring to your school: I am often commended for my high level of communication skills and empathy when interacting with people of all age interpersonal skills including a capacity to develop constructive relationships with groups in the community. I engage wellstudents, with parentsparents as I regard them as thestaff. fundamental partner in their child’s education. I and other am confident in my ability to convey my ideas to my peers and colleagues, and enjoy receiving their perspectives and positive and constructive feedback relating to my practices. I see your school staff and wider community as a dynamic, exciting and stimulating environment to be a part of, which I would connect productively with all its members. If employed at your school, I will continue to extend and utilise my communication skills to develop effective working relationships. Furthermore I would enhance student learning through clear and concise communication of expectations and learning outcomes of tasks set within the classroom.

“It has been wonderful having Melissa as a student teacher. [She] is often one step ahead in this fast pace environment and she has shared many ideas that have been valued by the team.” – Helen Trewavas, Vermont Primary School. The importance of commitment and active contribution in the profession of teaching is an underlying and important criterion for becoming a teacher in a high quality and collaborative school. Teachers are required to be committed to the quality of their pedagogical practices, together with school activities, in order to facilitate a co-operative, inclusive wholeschool atmosphere. It is this participation in school events and planning, which additionally strengthens relationships with students, parents, families and colleagues. Participation in the planning and implementation of the curriculum also unites and encourages colleagues to reflect upon and communicate ideas of effective pedagogical strategies within their practices. It is the essence of being a teacher that employs a strong commitment to the process of reflection, together with the extension and development of individual’s professional skills to maintain a relevant and quality breadth of effective teaching practices. Professional development opportunities within schools are regarded with great importance to maintain such high standards of teaching, and uphold this commitment to providing quality education for our students.

My Professional Practice: My commitment and passion and involvement in being an active member of the profession, and wider community of school activities have been qualified through: • At Vermont Primary School, I have voluntarily participated in Prep information sessions for new and existing members of the school. • I have attended and supervised a number of excursions and incursion through my practical placement experiences. • Participating in and assisted in the planning and implementation of out of school hours care holiday programs, and excursion activities to various locales. • Through my practical experiences, university studies and through outside organisations, I have attended a variety of professional development seminars to enhance and extend my professional practice skills and knowledge. • I consistently update my professional knowledge through current literature and professional discourse with peers, colleagues and with previous supervising mentor teachers. • Through my university study I have been implementing an action research project focused on developing equity and turn taking in the classroom and the curriculum, and how it affects the social and emotional elements of individual children in the classroom.

What I will bring to your school: If employed at your school, I would continue to develop my own professional knowledge through involving myself in extra-curricula activities through the school and its community. Furthermore, would encourage my commitment to the KSC5. Demonstrated commitment and capacity to Iactively contribute to a broad teaching profession byof attending seminars enhance, extend and reflect my professional range schoolprofessional activitiesdevelopment and a capacity totoreflect on, evaluate andon improve practices. Through these extra curriculaprofessional activities, I believe each event and wouldpractice. encourage a positive and collaborative knowledge learning environment for students, families and teacher, and I am eager to participate in the development and implementation of these.