AITSL Standards

Standard 2.6:

ICT usage in the classroom is an important part of secondary school (AITSL, 2011). As such it has been included in the teaching standards, under the focus area 2.6.

Explict teaching of ICT in the Science classroom is very important for the Science Inquiry skills needed, as per the School Curriculum and Standards Authority (SCSA, 2014).

When teaching year 8 body systems, specifically the digestive system, researching the role of different organs is a great way to engage students in the concepts. The students are partaking in genuine scientific research, using approved sources, to further their content knowledge. This is also seen as a form of guided scientific exploration, or scientific inquiry (Dawson, Venville & Dovovan, 2019).

Whilst on practicum, Year 8's were given a team task, where they need to report o the structure, function and important information of each organ in the digestive system. To ensure the success of the class, time was spent explicitly teaching the students how to research effectively. Instruction was done at the beginning of the lesson with concept questions, before groups were made, to ensure student knew the expectation of research (Churchill et al, 2018). A modified slide has been shown below, to demonstrate how the instruction was given.

The effect of this explicit instruction of ICT usage, led to some fantastic presentations at the end of the class. The students were not only well researched for their own part of the digestive system, but were able to ask questions to how it relates to other groups presentations. This showcased the positive impact the integration of ICT had on their learning and applying new concepts, as opposed to other resources.

Teaching the students how to appropriately research and engage with ICT would be considered either 'Augmentation' or 'Modification' on the SAMR model, as shown above (Puentedura, 2013). Getting students to research using the online tools has significantly changed the task, as opposed to researching with textbooks. However not every student was engaging to the same level, with some just relying on textbooks whilst cross checking some definitions. In the future I can ensure the task was completely transformed, through the use of changing the presentations. By making the presentations be digital, either semi-structured PowerPoints, or a poster on software such as Prezi, the students would be more engaged with the content, through the use of digital tool.

However a more collaborative and transformative task would be to create a shared document, where students would include their specific organ to a particular slide on a Google Slides document. This would require more explicit instruction, to limit off task behaviour, however the result would lead to a cohesive class presentation. This in itself merges the benefits of guided inquiry with that of collaborative work (Dawson, Venville & Dovovan, 2019; Duchesne & McMaugh, 2016).

References

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) . (2011). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.https://www.aitsl.edu.au/docs/default-source/national-policy-framework/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers.pdf

Churchill, R., Godhino, S,. Johnson, N.F., Keddie, A., Letts, W., Lowe, K., Mackay, J., McGill, M., Moss, J., Nagel, M.C., Shaw, K., & Rogers, J. (2018).Teaching: Making a difference (4th ed.). John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd.

Dawson, V., Venville, G., & Dovovan, J. (2019). The art of teaching science: A comprehensive guide to the teaching of secondary school science (3rd ed). Allen and Unwin.

Duchesne, S., & McMaugh, A. (2016). Educational Psychology (6th ed.). Cengage Learning Australia Pty Limited

Puentedura, R. R. (2013, May 29). SAMR: Moving from enhancement to transformation [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/archives/000095.html

School Curriculum and Standards Authority (SCSA). (2014). Western Australian Curriculum. https://k10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au/home/teaching/curriculum-browser.