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

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

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The unit plan demonstrates a variety of teaching strategies (role-play, hands-on, and body-based learning experiences) to support concepts around telling time, aligned with the objectives and available resources. The strategies were designed in light of the educational philosophy of constructivism, where carefully chosen teaching strategies provide student-centered learning experiences for critical thinking (Skamp & Preston 2018; Woolfolk & Margetts 2013; Ground-Water Smith, Ewing & Le Cornu, 2015).

All the teaching strategies mentioned above use collaborative learning where students develop higher-order thinking through interactions and discussions with teachers, peers, and tools in their environment (Woolfolk & Margetts 2013). In addition to the collaborative teaching strategies, explicit teaching was also part of the plan, especially relevant to a bilingual classroom where the explicit introduction of content-specific vocabulary was required. These strategies, along with challenging learning goals, ensured sustained engagement by students taking charge of their own learning for lifelong skills.