SID: 18372205, Matthew McClure

School of Education
Professional Practice 3
102605 Secondary PP Community Engagement
Self Reflection Form

Pre-service Teacher Details

Pre-service Teacher Name: Pre-service Teacher ID:

Matthew McClure 18372205
Pre-service Teacher Phone Number: Pre-service Teacher Email Address:
0424452921 18372205@student.westernsydney.edu.au

Placement Details: If you haven’t complete 60 hours face to face you must provide a
detailed statement of how your experience meets the outcomes for Professional
Practice CE. Attach evidence.

Placement Name: Placement Phone Number:

Christadelphian Heritage College 02 9826 2116
Sydney
Placement Address: Placement Email Address:
110 Cross Street, Kemps Creek, NSW office@hcs.nsw.edu.au
Contact Person:
Rebekah Wetherton

Describe in about 500 WORDS any features and benefits of the setting you attended. Consider
number of students, location details, age of students, types of educational programs offered and any
other salient aspects of the experience. Consider how this experience will contribute to your
development as a beginning teacher.

AITSL Standards

The criteria for pre-service teacher reflection focus, the first, second, third and sixth standards.
 1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds
 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full
range of abilities
 2.2 Content selection and organisation
 3.1 Establish challenging learning goals
 6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice

Subsidiary questions:
What surprised you about your learning in your community setting?
What research about communities did you engage with before you commenced?
What goals did you set for yourself in your service learning activities?
What do you believe the participants in your service learning project learned?
What did you learn? How will the experience shape you as a teacher in a classroom?
Check Due Date accompanied by your Timesheet and signed Report.
Submissions after due date will receive an N grade. At the following HECS census date, if
the work is still incomplete, this will become an AF grade. This is University policy.
SID: 18372205, Matthew McClure

The AF grade can be changed when you complete the work. You must also keep a hard or
electronic copy of your assignment.

Submit this form online via InPlace. Your PPCE Report written by the Contract
Person, is mailed by them or delivered by you to the PP office in the SOE.

Reflection:

The placement I attended was at Christadelphian Heritage College Sydney; a semi-rural

independent school with around 250 students ranging from Kindergarten to Year 12. Whilst attending,

my primary responsibility was to assist in learning support activities for students of all ages. I was also

given opportunities to observe regular classroom secondary classes suited to my teaching areas. My

learning support activities mostly involved one-on-one sessions with students to improve their literacy

skills.

I was surprised by the range of students’ needs and how these manifested. For example, some

sessions with students suffering Autism Spectrum Disorder focused on correctly enunciating letter

sounds. Other sessions were conducted with students from non-English speaking backgrounds who were

also refugees from war zones; here less focus was placed on the ‘science’ and rules of literacy and more

on literacy skills’ relevance to the learner. I was especially surprised at the diverse demands placed upon

learning support teachers and the range of unique strategies that were enacted to meet needs.

The participants in my learning project, that being the students, mainly learnt about literacy skills.

These classes broadly targeted two things: grammar knowledge including students’ punctuation,

spelling, syntax and vocabulary; and comprehension as conveyed through reading and writing skills. My

lessons were framed and guided by the Mini-Lit and Multi-Lit learning support programs which the

school uses for learning support activities. A typical lesson would feature students being provided a list

of new words to attempt to pronounce; some of these words would then be chosen at random for

students to spell. Finally, students would select a piece of literature suitable to their class-level and read

that aloud. A student would be asked questions about the text on occasions to test their comprehension
SID: 18372205, Matthew McClure

of the text. Their performance throughout these tasks was catalogued in a written report. With Early

Stage One and Stage One learners, arts and craft played a larger role in building their literacy skills

including the use of games to build new words and drawing upon animal noises to illustrate letters

sounds (such as ‘s’ for ‘snake’).

This experience has contributed to my development as a beginner teacher in two ways. The direct

and extended contact with students with additional needs will guide my teaching strategies in a regular

classroom setting. The experience has highlighted the need to adapt my practice to suit the needs of

individuals; otherwise lessons’ intellectual quality will suffer and students become disengaged. Some

strategies for differentiating my practice were learnt. For example, refugee students and students from

culturally diverse backgrounds responded positively to lessons that engaged their identity and used that

in conveying lessons’ content. This gave learning relevance and the use of familiar terms and social

structures made abstract concepts (such as the syntax of the English language) easier to understand.

Another lesson learnt for my practice is to individualise strategies rather than use blanket responses. On

my placement I taught four students who had fled from war zones. Two of the pupils did not desire to

have any reference made to this past, another student openly brought up the topic whilst the fourth

preferred to joke about this presumably as a coping strategy.