102093 Secondary Professional Practice 1 – Report

In my teaching practice, some strategies were successful, and some did not quite work well or
suit the situation. One of the strategies that maintained students’ engagement and
understanding of the learning activities effectively is using prompting questions. This
includes hints and reminders or indications to support the students’ participation in classwork
(Scott, 2014). Essentially, this strategy worked well with my low ability class and especially
with ADHD student, as he required an extra learning support. Another strategy that worked
well was using positive reinforcement to help maintain an appropriate behaviour, such as
providing tokens while indicating the reason for earning it. Here, positive reinforcement
would be more effective not only with tokens, but using “verbal praise statements” allows the
student to understand the motive of it and develops the teachers’ ways of praising (Musti-Rao
& Haydon, 2011, p.94). Such strategies in teaching practice serve to benefit students and as a
teacher, they shifted my limited thinking to critical thinking through implementing effective
approaches.

Furthermore, in my practicum, I implemented Attribution Theory to manage the

misbehaviour of students. The teacher and student need to have a mutual contribution to
manage the behaviour (Cothran, 2009). This theory worked through reflecting on what
worked and what did not. Through this, shifting from basic expectations to explicit
expectations and instructions reflects on what I expect from the students and they are required
to follow it. This theory requires the involvement of students, where they have an opportunity
to reflect on their behaviour and share it with the teacher. This allowed for students’
reflection to clarify expectations and accountability regarding their behaviour (Cothran,
2009). In my teaching practice, this theory has developed my teaching skills and improved
students’ behaviour.