ECL310 Page - Miss Pearson

Pre-service teacher

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Some illustrations of the upcoming book that I could illustrate 😉😉

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I wasn’t sure what I might find when searching  #picturebook but I was quiet surprised at the diverse range of pictures that came up. I found some illustrations by Aleksandra Szmidt for an upcoming picture book. Aleksandra grew up in a town in the south of Poland and currently resides in New Zealand.  She creates one-of-a-kind artwork for clients across the world as well as illustrating picture books for authors. Her love of drawing plants and animals is attributed to her landscape architecture studies. However, she prefers to design magical things often detached from reality. The majority of her artwork is traditionally created with watercolor, gouache, colored pencil and ink. This brings her immense joy and an emotional connection to her artwork. All her images are very beautiful and creative.

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Using the Bloom’s Taxonomy chart, teachers could use examples of question such as the following based on the text ‘Thai-Riffic’ by Oliver Phommavanh;

CREATE –

·      How could you design a new flyer for the Thai-rific!

·      Design a new front cover to the book

·      Create a new ending for the text of what might happen to the restaurant now there is a new restaurant ‘Wok N Roll’

EVALUATING –

·      What do you think is going to happen in the story?

·      What could Albert or his family do that would help bring more customers to the restaurant?

ANALYSING –

·      Using the text, identify words that indicate Albert is annoyed at his family during this time.

·      Describe how the rest of Albert and his family feel about their restaurant?

APPLYING –

·      How would you feel if you got called names at school? 

·      What could Albert do to change the restaurant?

COMPREHENDING –

·      Why does Albert call himself a “fake Aussie”?

·      What does ‘same same but different’ mean? 

·      Why does Albert dislike the ‘Thai-riffic!’ sign so much?

KNOWLEDGE AND REMEMBERING –

·      What is the main characters name?

·      What was the name of the Chinese restaurant opposite Thai-riffic!?

·      What was Albert’s nickname at school? Why didn’t he like it?

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The video I chose to watch was “So much beauty in the people of Darwin”. This video really opens your eyes to the culture diversity and the contribution many cultures have to a place within Australia. It really highlights many cultures that we have within Australia and the history of people carries with them.

 By Grade 6 level students should have some prior knowledge about ATSI and their history and culture. Most students should have an understanding to where Aboriginal sites and families live. Before starting the video I would pose some questions – What is culture? Where is culture? Who has culture? What are the types of cultures? As a frontloading activity I would begin with the Grade 6 Students watching the video ABC splash and then lead into a discussion things the students find interesting, might recognises and teacher ask the students to raise their hand to some questions - if they were born in another county, if your parents were born in another country, if your grandparents were born in another country, “if your great-grandparents were born in another country and so on till everyone has their hand up”. All students to look around the room and see everyone has someone in their family that has come from a different culture/country.

 The class would watch the video again and this time looking out anything learnt about different cultures and the differences to their own culture. Again another discussion will occur about the different cultures within the video and even in society around them. Using one of the discussed cultures, in small groups students are to pick a way to convey the meaning and traditions of these cultures. They can get creative by using music, visual art, dreamtime stories, preforming etc. Let their mind take them anywhere. After a given time the groups will present their idea to the class.

 After all presentations of cultures are presented. The teacher will introduce a chosen text that discusses culture diversity and how other cultures contribute to Australia.

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First sentence - The young child who’s family recently died laid in silence on a cold winters night, where he was left with no food, no strength and only his thoughts that consumed his hollow, transparent body.

 Second sentence– If only people opened up their eyes to the people that are hungry around the world and helped us.

 Front-loading activity – An activity is an Opinionaire where the whole class brainstorm thoughts and ideas of what they believe the chosen text will be about based on the cover and/or a page within the book (image above). The teacher will write them on the board for students to be able to see and fill out a table (example above). The students individually are to circle the letter A – agree, N – Neutral or D – Disagree in the Student column based on their opinion. Next the students find a partner to discuss their thought on the statements where they are then to circle the letter A, N or D in the Partner column base on that persons opinion. Finally after reading the text the students are to circle a letter again A, N or D in the After column based on what was read to them. This helps students recognise all the different views everyone has based on what they see due to each person having different background knowledge, beliefs and understanding.

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During my current round of placement I was again placed in a foundation class at a country school.  I would have to say this was one of the best placements as the whole school was very welcoming, all the students were lovely and my mentor teacher was amazing! As I had been in this class last placement round my mentor teacher said from the get go that I was allowed to teach any units start away as I knew the students. The foundation teachers had decided to use fairy tale books to help guide the topics for each unit therefore, the fairy tale of Cinderella, for literacy the students read different stories of Cinderella and placed events within the story into an order of occurrence. For writing students wrote model invitations to the Princes ball and then got to write their own invitations to a friend. For mathematics the focused on time of the events in the story and the time between each event and for science they had to create their own cart using different materials and explain why they chose those materials. All these topics allowed for a set task, which then ended in an open-ended task for students that ended a further challenge.

As my mentor teacher noticed that my strong points were maths and science I began teaching these and by the end of the placement I was teaching literacy, writing, maths, science, physical education and a school based program ‘Play is the way’. My wonderful experience at this school was all due to my mentor teacher allowing me to teach all units, giving advice constantly, being part of my lesson planning and being a great support. I honestly can say I did not have a bad experience during my placement as It was the best one I have been on and I learnt so much from this round. I have developed and learnt so much about my teaching strategies, being adaptive, having my own voice within a class/school and so much more!

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During my first lot of placement this year, students were asked to do a small research assessment on their favourite animal. The students were asked to write a piece of writing to be stuck on a poster that then had facts written around the page with pictures/drawings. As students were beginning to write sentences the idea was for students to start writing about something they love and has meaning to them. This foundation student’s piece of work has an area that could 🐝👍🏻according to 6️⃣ to 1️⃣traits is 📝conventions. Within the 📰the 👨🏻‍🎓has throughout used capital letters in his writing instead just of at the start of the sentence ❌. He could of also used more punctuation such as ❗️ and full🛑so his sentence isn't so long and adds emotions ❤️😢😘😊 to his 📝. Finally as some words are 👓words that the 👨🏻‍🎓could of checked ✔️the spelling of some of his words.

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During my placement I have been asked many times to create a wall display within the classroom for the students to use as a reference to something they are focusing on for reading. Making the voice wall display recently on placement for the foundation students was fun and useful. As they are beginning to learn and understand there are more to book than words and pictures on a page. The Voices wall allows them to think about what they are reading, notice the way the book is read and written and helps them understand what they are reading.

The second one was a poster that I used in a Grade 6 classroom as a reference for them when adding meaning to a classroom text. The students were getting confused with text to self and text to world. Having this poster up in the room allowed student to get a helpful reminder of the difference so they were able to identify self or world. Having this up within the classroom really did help the students where instead of having a couple of sticky notes within their book they all had at least 20. Something small can have a big impact on students learning.  #ecldeakin #prompt2 #voices #literacy #meaningtotext 

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A vivid childhood book that was read to the Grade 2 class I was in was ‘The Cat in the Hat’ by Dr Seuss. Every time the teacher would read parts of the book, the whole class listened intently to the expression the teacher used and the words within the book. All the students would laugh constantly and their faces were mesmerised by the creativity and cheekiness of the cat. During the year and even year the course of primary school the book was read millions of times by students on their own and as a whole class. As the class loved the creativity and funniness of the book we created our own little skit of ‘The Cat in the Hat’ to present at the end of year school concert. Still to this day I see students reading the book and see on their faces the love I had for the book when I was younger. Even as an adult I still have times that things remind me of this Dr Seuss’s books and make me reflect on when they were read to me.