Breandan Wolff EDUC4742 207-2459

 TPA Activity 1

Activity 1 (undertaken prior to placement)

LINKS to STANDARD 6.1

Self-assess your professional learning goals using the Australian Professional Standards
rubric in your Handbook.

I am told that my sense of humour and general demeanour enable me to quickly build
relationships with students, and for the most part this seems to be the case. I think that as an
older pre-service teacher with my own children (16 & 19) I have a better understanding (and
lack of apprehension?) of how to deal with secondary students (teenagers) than my younger
peers.

On the other hand I feel that my ability to manage classroom behaviour requires some work.
If I have the ability to build a quick rapport with students I also have a tendency to overlook a
level of behaviour to maintain that relationship. I need to work on finding the medium
between the two that doesn’t threaten the classroom environment by allowing a behaviour
level that causes distraction, as my class norm.

I really enjoy teaching Year 8 – 9 General Science. These are the years and topics in which
teachers should be able to encourage and engage students by providing interesting science
lessons. Students at this level should be shown that science is both important and fun, and
something they should consider continuing to study. I have previously found that following a
textbook is not the best way to achieve an enthusiastic class of students. Textbooks and
practicals from a textbook in particular, seem to be set at a minimum achievable standard,
both in what the students can achieve and what the school can provide from a materials
perspective. On this placement I want to find some more engaging / interesting practicals.

I am concerned about the SACE classes I will be teaching. Even though biology is my major
area of study, my preference of topics is generally big systems like ecology. The curriculum
for SACE biology is very focused on genetics and cellular level interactions, so I will need to
do almost as much study and planning as the students in the classes I’ll teach.