Professional Practice
Standard 3: Plan for and implement effective teaching & learning

A planning web for a Maths unit on ‘Time’, designed for Kindergarten students in a bilingual classroom learning to tell time in hours.

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My planning was based on my overarching constructivist philosophy of education, where students are creators of their own knowledge by participating in relevant experiences and using language to express their developing knowledge and skills, contributing further to understanding concepts, as recommended by Skamp &Preston (2018); Woolfolk and Margetts (2013); and Ground-Water Smith, Ewing, and Le Cornu (2015).

The objectives of the unit were achieved with various teaching strategies, from role-plays to hands-on and body-based learning experiences, for deeper cognitive linkages catering to different types of learners. Moreover, flexibility in planning and the opportunity for continuous reflection on my practice and students’ knowledge contributed to effective teaching and learning, as recommended by Ground-Water Smith, Ewing, and Le Cornu (2015). Furthermore, formative assessment viewed objectively through the lens of a pre-designed rubric informed my next phase of planning and implementation and contributed to successful teaching and learning opportunities. Reflection and evaluation of the diagnostic assessment at the beginning of the unit of students’ prior knowledge also affirmed the selection of my learning goals, contributing to effective teaching and learning.

For the sequencing of the plan, the objectives of the unit, its content, and the assessment of students’ learning were used as grounding factors. Keeping students’ age in context, only one concept was introduced in each lesson. To consolidate understanding, more opportunities to practise using concepts with more than one dimension were provided.