Standard 2 – Know the content and how to teach it

Evidence:

1) ATAR Year 12 Formative Assessment

2) Mentor Teacher Comments

Reflective Commentary

I am very fortunate that working as a Teacher Assistant with a Limited Authority to teach has provided me with a few years of experience teaching Japanese according to the WA Curriculum and Assessment Outline. My school, in particular, has extremely organised units of work for each year level that have been backward designed from the requirements of the Year 12 ATAR course. Within this framework, I have had to design and implement academically rigorous lessons and assessments that assist students to meet the high standards expected of them. I think one of the best things I did to increase my professional knowledge was to become a Japanese WACE examiner. This has not only assisted me in my lesson planning but also helped with my understanding and approach to marking.

I was also fortunate to be given the opportunity to design and implement a Year 6 Japanese Extension Program. Developing content for complete beginners has allowed me to reflect deeply on language acquisition order as well as how to integrate cultural understandings. It is important to me that students' cultural understandings grow alongside their linguistic competence.

Situation: Year 12 ATAR - This year in my year 12 class I had students representing a full range of abilities. It was expected of me that I would help ALL students get to an average of 70% or higher by the end of term 3. Three students failed the term one test revealed that students were not performing at the expected standard and unfortunately three students failed the test altogether. I knew I needed to implement strategies to assist all my students to meet the requirements of the WACE exams and push students to meet higher standards of what they had previously achieved.

Action: I decided that it was important to provide students with rigorous formative assessments in order to analyse their specific gaps of knowledge and create learning activities that would specifically address these gaps. I individually analysed each student’s ‘areas in need of improvement’ and created at least ten written formative assessments throughout semester 1. I marked each one and provided specific feedback to each student's (see samples below) and in many cases I made students redo the task until they had reached a standard of 75% or higher - making sure students understand how the marking key works.

Outcome: The final WACE results are not yet available, but I am very optimistic that my students will all do very well. At the end of Term 3, the class average is 78%. 90% of students are on a mark of 85% or higher and all students are performing well above where they were at the end of Term 1.

Future Action Plan: Next year I will continue to be a practical WACE examiner and I will also apply to become a WACE exam writer as well.