Contemporary Teacher Leadership 2020

Assignment 1

Executive Summary
Objective and context:

This report has been designed for the English Faculty at Belmore Boys High school.
Belmore Boys High School is a single sex government school located in Western Sydney.
The school has divided the classes based on ability. The top streamed classes “B”, and
mixed ability classes “E, L, and M”. The school’s population is 374 male students. There
are no students who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person.
However, 98% of students in the school originate from a language background other
than English. Multiculturalism is very prevalent within the schools community. Belmore
Boys High school socioeconomic status is positioned on the lower end of the spectrum
with 54% of the community earnings positioned in the low range. During my teaching at
Belmore Boys High school, I taught and delivered 4 weeks of the stage 4 (year 7) “My
world” unit. My class 7E was a mixed ability class consisting of lower ability students.
Applying the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework of McTighe & Wiggins (2005),
the report focuses on improving general capabilities of literacy, numeracy, and critical
and creative thinking. Re-designing the unit based on the three general capabilities will
essentially strengthen student understanding, provide opportunity for development and
ultimately improve student outcome.

Goals:

The recommendations of this report aim to:

- Address the numeracy concerns in the unit by presenting significant and

relatable numeracy tasks
- Address the literacy concerns in the unit by incorporating literacy activities
varying from the basic reading and writing skills. Alternatively incorporate more
engaging and relevant literacy skills such as visual, oral, digital creative literacy
skills.
- Develop the use of ICT as a resource to aid in addressing numeracy and literacy
concerns
 - Allow for opportunities to extend upon critical and creative learning
- Provide greater assistance for students in developing the skills required to
transfer and apply knowledge in new content.
- Improve the prevalence of differentiation within the unit through differentiated
instruction, delivery, content and assessment.
Recommendations:
- The below recommendations are designed to be applied within a classroom of
low-level mixed ability students.
- The recommendations incorporate differentiated learning in order to meet the
needs of diverse leaners.
- Enhancing learning through the use of ICT activities
- Enhance knowledge acquisition by applying and improving literacy strategies
- Including an array of literacy skills significant and relatable to the real world
- Enhancing critical and creative thinking through inquiry based learning,
problem solving, engaging collaboratively and fostering creativity
- Incorporating a new section in the unit outline titled “Transfer of Learning”,
whereby practical skills are identified for students to apply throughout the unit
and other contexts, aligning with stage 1 of the UbD.
- Modifying the design of the assessment task in line with stage 2 of the UbD to
allow for differentiation and allow for the success of all students
- The students are strongly scaffolded throughout the entirety of the unit
including the assessment task, aligning with stage 2 of the UbD
- Developing the progression of student learning by adjusting the sequence of the
lessons to extend student learning whilst aligning with stage 3 of the UbD.

Background information to the unit:

The unit “My World” is undertaken in term 4 of year 7. The location of the unit within
the scope and sequence makes it easier for students to effectively complete the unit.
Concepts acquired in previous units are essential and set the foundation for the current
unit. This allows for a smoother application of students previous knowledge to new
acquired knowledge. The “sustainability” unit is a great unit to be taught in student’s
easier years of high school, as it provides students with the knowledge to be more active
citizens in society. The unit comprises of topics that teach students the importance of
caring for the environment, the impacts human have on the environment and the steps
one can take to minimise impacts. This unit utilises many cross-curricular components
and has links with geography and history. I taught this unit for over 4 weeks. Within the
4 weeks of teaching, the concepts I largely focused were human impacts on the
environment and strategies to minimise impact. This information had to be applied
through the use of persuasive writing (a speech) that was to be presented in class.