Focus Area 4.1 Support Student Participation
Establish and implement inclusive and positive interactions to engage and support all students in classroom activities.
Students, irrespective of their backgrounds, learning styles and interests are most prepared to engage in learning in environments where they feel safe, secure, relaxed and comfortable. Participation in learning may be constrained if they feel afraid, unsafe or uncomfortable. Providing an environment that is inclusive and safe assists students in feeling comfortable to seek help, other learning opportunities and to develop as a young individual.
I often choose to use a variety of strategies to support inclusive student participation with all of my classroom activities. One example I have useful during discussions in group or class discussions, was using a cup/ containers which held pop sticks with students names on them. This allowed me to call upon students names to share their ideas or work without them feeling picked on. If the student then had difficulty answering the question, I would draw another name out and ask them to collaborate ideas and respond after I had asked someone else. Another strategy I use is allocating all students a number which only they are aware of or sometimes I am the only person who knows. Students are provided with a sticky note where their number was placed up the top instead of their names. I would then ask students to write their response on the sticky note and place it either on the board or a table so others don't know who said what. Sometimes I will use different coloured sticky notes to look at different questions. Doing this also allowed the class to collaborate each others ideas and learn off each other. (4.2, 5.1, 5.4) |
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The implementation of the sports education model has been shown through intensive amounts of research, to increase students motivation and engagement levels (Wallhead & Ntoumanis, 2004) During my final professional experience, I implemented a Sports Tournament with my year 10 class using the Sport Education model. All students were evenly divided into four different teams, these teams were based on ability, experience and readiness levels. From there, each child in all teams were assigned a specific role, which they allocated themselves by determining as a group who was better suited. This allowed students to take ownership of their roles, and it always ensured that all children had their own responsibilities and tasks they needed to complete each lesson. In result of this, students who were not able to participate in lessons had been given a task to complete. In this case a girl had a broken arm and was unable to engage in the games, so she was allocated as the statistician for her specific team.