I’m currently completing a step of my BOSTES (Board of Studies Teaching Education Standards) accreditation which involves focusing teaching practice around seven set standards that a modern teacher must follow in order to be an effective teacher in a contemporary classroom.
To be honest the standards are pretty good; they are designed to create dynamic teachers who are ready to teach 21st century students. Comparing my work in the classroom to that of the seven standards has been a good exercise as it has given me more confidence in my teaching practices and that is what I wanted to talk about today. Confidence.
Confidence in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) is everything. At the start of each lesson you need students to believe in their abilities enough to excel in their learning. Without confidence the first challenge in any lesson will seem too hard, far too daunting and therefore not possible. No matter how great your lesson is, no matter how well you can teach it, if your students don’t have the confidence walking into the classroom they will not be able to achieve. On the contrary a confident group of students will take on anything. Students will have the belief that if they put their mind to the work they will be able to overcome challenges and learn from experiences.
In Stage 4 my focus has been on building confidence in STEM through skill acquisition. For mathematics it has been a focus on developing the ‘working with maths skills’ from the Australian curriculum. Those skills include communicating, problem solving and reasoning. Planning lessons to have introductory tasks that are based upon prior student knowledge then moving through the mathematics content, developing skills with each task, has been a successful method for every mathematics lesson Stage 4 has completed this year.
In science confidence is important due to the major learning barrier of complex scientific language. Unless you have an understanding of latin language learning scientific concepts can be difficult. For Stage 4 it has been a focus on building understanding of complicated scientific concepts through visualisation in the form of models and diagrams. Presenting scientific concepts in this way breaks the language barrier and gives students an opportunity to learn and produce work of an intricate nature.
Below is a Year 8 student’s presentation showing the organ systems of plants. The scientific language is evident and well utilised. It is the visualisation of the system along with the language that best conveys the scientific concepts. This is done in a way that is most appropriate for a student of 12-14 years of age.
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