report

This is a 2000 word report with 5 parts

There is no need for an introduction, thesis statement or a conclusion.

Subheadings can be used

• You do need to cite all external material and include a reference list (APA style).

• You can include a title on the first page. • Include a header with your name, unit code and ‘Assessment 2’.

• Include a footer = page numbers. • 1.5 line spacing & size 12 font (Times / Arial)

Assessment overview

This assessment task provides you with an opportunity to think deeply about what school and schooling means to you. You are required to design and justify a new school in regard to its curriculum and pedagogical focus, school policies, and leadership structure. In designing this new school you will be expected to take into account the demographics of the school as presented in the scenario below.

Purpose of the assessment

As a professional preparing to work within the field of Education you will have ideas about how schools should be set up, what they should offer to students in the way of curriculum, and the contexts (physical as well social/emotional) in which students learn.

Designing a new school requires you to think holistically about a range of schooling-related issues. It requires the articulation of your beliefs and values in regard to schooling, as well as information about what constitutes best practice in terms of how and where teaching and learning happen.

If you were in charge, what environment would you create for students, what subjects would you offer, and what policies would you put in place?

Word count

As there are several visual elements to this assessment the word limit is designed to reflect the equivalent amount of planning, research and editing you might put into a 2000 word essay. Along with the specified word limits in the written reflection and rationale, the word limits indicated for each section of the plan are to guide you in how much time and effort to put into each of these parts. The extent to which you use visuals or words in your plan is up to you.

Assessment details

You are required to submit a plan for a new school using the information and details in the following scenario.

Scenario

You are an education consultant tasked with constructing a new school in a growth corridor adjacent to a major Australian city. Your team has received the following information about the school, which you are to use in your planning and decision-making:

The school is a public, mainstream, Foundation-Grade 6 primary school.

There is a diverse student population of approximately 500 students, including 5-10% Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander population.

The school is situated within a multi-cultural, multi-faith community.

The decisions you make in the plan of this new school should pay particular attention to issues associated with teaching in Australian schools including:

Societal and professional expectations of teachers

Issues confronting teachers in their professional practice

Policies and practices in Australian education

Cultural and indigenous issues as they apply to Australian schooling. The more issues you are able to address in the plan for the new school the better.

Assessment structure

Your plan for the new school consists of five parts:

1. Structure

2. Curriculum and pedagogy

3. Policy and values

4. Classroom setup

5. Reflection

Part one: Structure (350 words equivalent)

Design the physical layout of the school – that is, provide a map of the school. You should consider a layout and design for the classrooms and school buildings that takes into account the information provided in the scenario and that is coherent with the other parts of the task.

Describe, through the use of an organisational chart, the school structure, governance and leadership of the school (such as the school board, school council, P&F and SRC).

Write a 150-word rationale justifying your decisions. This rationale must be based on evidence sourced from Department of Education websites, and scholarly and professional literature.

•PART 1 a) Design the physical layout of the school

– that is, provide a map of the school Keep these plans simple –try not to not get caught up in the technology otherwise you will spend time learning how to use the technology and not focus enough time and thought on the design itself. You can use pencil and paper and then scan that drawing (or photograph it) and insert the image into your final submission. Super keen to use technology?

You could give http://www.sketchup.com/

a try.

PART 1b)

Describe, through the use of an organisational chart, the school structure, governance and leadership of the school (school board, school council, P&F, SRC, etc.) https://www.lucidchart.com/

Part 1 c)

Write a 150-word rationale justifying your decisions. This rationale must be based on evidence sourced from Department of Education websites, and scholarly and professional literature.

Part two: Curriculum and pedagogy (350 words)

List the broad curriculum areas that will be offered at the school, including specific subjects. For instance, a ‘broad curriculum area’ might be The Arts; specific subjects you might offer are Drama and Dance.

Write a brief statement about the overarching pedagogical approach (e.g. inquiry, problem based, design thinking). The pedagogical approach should align with your curriculum focus.

Write a 150-word rationale justifying your decisions. This rationale must be based on evidence sourced from Department of Education websites, and scholarly and professional literature.

Part 2a)

List the curriculum areas that will be offered, including specific subjects Consider what will be taught in this school.

For instance, will the Arts be taught and if so, will all five Arts subjects be taught (Drama, Dance, Visual Art, Music, and Media) or only music and visual art?

There is a seemingly endless list of things that could be taught – what will the school be planning to focus on?

Will the early years (Foundation – Year 2) focus on English, Maths and History, with other subjects added in older years (although for subjects like Economics and Business it only kicks in at the Year 5 level – but this is something students need to know).

Will a language be taught and if so, which one/s?

Include curriculum for the WHOLE school

Part 2 b) Write a brief statement about the overarching pedagogical approach (e.g inquiry, problem based, design thinking). This pedagogical approach should align with your curriculum focus.

Part 2 c) Write a 150-word rationale justifying your decisions. This rationale must be based on evidence sourced from Department of Education websites, and scholarly and professional literature.

Part three: Policy and values (350 words)

Write a 25-word school mission statement.

List five values that underpin the school’s ethos.

Consider the issues that the school might face and list ten policies that represent the core policy focus of the school.

Write a 250-word rationale justifying your decisions. Pay particular attention to how the policies and values you have chosen align with your decisions in the curriculum and pedagogy section of the plan. This rationale must be based on evidence sourced from Department of Education websites, and scholarly and professional literature.

Part 3a) Craft a 25-word school mission statement (don’t go over this word count but under is fine)

Eg At ‘Happy School’ we aim to provide a happy, safe and academically stimulating environment which personalises learning for all students.

Part 3b) List five values that underpin the school’s ethos Eg Respect - Excellence - Inclusiveness - Integrity - Responsibility - Pride – Optimism

Part 3c)

I. Consider the issues that the school might face Use the scenario as you starting point here.

II. List ten (10) policies that represent the core policy focus.

Some of the policy areas you might consider are:

*School accountability *Duty of care *Student engagement *Cyber-safety

*Health and wellbeing (sun smart, healthy eating, etc.) *Uniform *Bullying

*Multi-culturalism

Again this should demonstrate coherence – think carefully about the 10 policies that you list. Don’t just add a policy for the sake of having a policy!

Example – the scenario outlines this is a multi-faith community – thus you would not include a policy that outlines all children must attend Christmas services

Part 3 d)

Write a 250 word rationale justifying your decisions. Why did you choose these 10 policies? How will these policies enhance the student experience? How do these policies align with the curriculum and pedagogy the school is offering? Community?

This rationale must be based on evidence sourced from Department of Education websites, and scholarly and professional literature.

Part four: Classroom setup (350 words equivalent)

Design an ‘ideal’ lower primary (Foundation year-Grade 2), OR an ‘ideal’ upper primary (Grade 3-6) classroom (the plan must stipulate your choice).

Write a 150-word rationale justifying your decisions. This rationale must be based on evidence sourced from Department of Education websites, and scholarly and professional literature.

Before final submission of your plan, you should implement any eLA and peer feedback that you have received on the four parts described above.

Part 4 a)

Design an ‘ideal’ lower primary (Foundation yearGrade 2), OR an ‘ideal’ upper primary (Grade 3-6) classroom (the plan must stipulate your choice)

As outlined on Slide 14 – don’t get caught up in technology you can hand draw this and scan it or use http://www.sketchup.com/

You can choose either lower primary school / upper primary school. One suggestion is to choose your preferred age group here – it may make designing the classroom easier

Part 4 b)

Write a 150-word rationale justifying your decisions. This rationale must be based on evidence sourced from Department of Education websites, and scholarly and professional literature.

Remember to be specific to the age group you have chosen here. Ie if you have designed a lower primary classroom (Foundation – Year 2) don’t discuss topics related to Grade 5s etc

Part five: Reflection (600 words)

Your plan must include a 600-word reflection on your experience of designing the school.

Use the questions below to guide your reflection.

Peer feedback

How did you use feedback received from your tutor and peers to further develop your ideas? What aspects of your plan did you change and why? If you chose not to implement changes based on feedback, why did you make this choice?

Peer feedback

You need to discuss how you used feedback to develop this submission. You can do this by writing: “The feedback provided by my peers / or eLA was useful to ….In particular this aided me to develop…I changed this section because…. I chose to stay with my original idea because….”

You as a learner

What were the biggest challenges you faced in completing this assessment task? How did you overcome/deal with these challenges?

What would you do differently if you had the chance to do this assessment task again? Why?

What did you learn about Australian schooling through completing this assessment task?

What grade would you award your submission? Justify your grade using the rubric below.

You as a learner

You need to reflect on yourself as a learner, which you can do by writing “The biggest challenge I faced in completing this assessment task was …. I overcame this challenge through..... I realised that no one was going to do the work for me ..... I also realised that ..... If I did this task again I would …” and so on and so forth.

Structure of the reflection:

You don’t need an introduction, a thesis statement, a list of arguments, a body and a conclusion … you just need to write reflectively.

For Part 5 (Reflection) you CAN write in FIRST person - I / We/ Our … are all acceptable!

So you can: Use the language of the task to structure your response (as outlined on the previous slide), or you can use subheadings.

The important thing you have to do is reflect

Reflect don’t describe:

So to ‘sum up’ you can use the language of the task to structure your response, or you can use subheadings. The important thing you have to do is reflect – which is different from describing something. Reflection is about interpreting experience, which goes beyond describing it.

Example of descriptive writing:

Today I was involved in a car accident. I was texting my husband to let him know that I’d be home a little late and didn’t see the car in front of me stop. I ran into the back of that car, although as I wasn’t going very fast no one was hurt.

That’s a description of the event.

Example of reflective writing:

After the crash I sat in the gutter, feeling like a right wally. I’ve heard of the dangers of texting while driving, but thought I’d be different – that I’d be more careful, more aware of the situation around me, more in control. Turns out I wasn’t any of those things. I’m just like every other stupid person who texts while they drive. This was a real wake‐up call to me and it’ll be a long time before I text while driving. If I was really clever I’d say it would be the last time, but I know that in a few months’ time I’ll be back at it, thinking that I’m invincible, that I’ll take more care, that I’ll be more aware of the situation around me … but I won’t. Really then, I haven’t learnt anything from this experience.

A reflection would be quite different, and would go into the sense I made of that experience, what was significant for me in relation to that event, what I learnt through this experience

Assessment criteria

1. Coherence across all aspects of the plan, including the rationale.

2. Application of knowledge of issues associated with teaching in Australian schools.

3. Professional presentation

Your work will be assessed according to the following holistic rubric:

Pass (P 50-59%)

In order to Pass this assessment task, all aspects of the task must be completed and the requirements of all criteria met at a satisfactory level.

In relation to the school plan and its justification, rudimentary knowledge of the following is evident in decisions made about the school:

societal and professional expectations of teachers

issues confronting teachers in their professional practice

policies and practices in Australian education

cultural and indigenous issues as they apply to Australian schooling.

In addition, an attempt has been made to create a plan that is coherent across all areas. For instance, attention has been paid to the alignment between individual areas, for example policies and curriculum. The rationale draws on a limited range of literature and attempts to justify decisions made.

The reflection provides adequate discussion of the role of feedback in revising the plan, and of the personal and professional learning resulting from this task.

Conventions of written English are generally adhered to. Careful proofreading has meant the elimination of most typographical and spelling errors. Word choice, sentence structure and grammatical issues do not detract substantially from the communication of ideas. All work is original, or where others’ work is integrated, has been cited correctly according to APA referencing conventions.

Credit (C 60-69%)

To be awarded a Credit, students must fulfil all the requirements of the Pass level but with more sophistication. The main difference between a Pass and a Credit is in:

the coherence of the plan

the application of knowledge and understanding to the issues affecting teachers in Australian schools

the use of relevant and appropriate literature to justify decisions made

the depth of reflection on feedback received and the impact of this feedback on the own learning

the professionalism of the presentation.

Distinction (D 70-79%)

To be awarded a Distinction for this task, students must meet all the requirements of the Credit level, but with a level of discernment that demonstrates:

deep understanding of issues that relate to teachers’ work in Australian schools

thoughtful application of this understanding in the decisions made about the school

creative and courageous decision-making based on sound evidence and wide reading from a range of appropriate sources

insightful reflection on peer feedback and own learning about writing and Australian schooling thorough proofreading and attention to the presentation of the plan, the rationale and the reflection.

High Distinction (HD 80-100%)

To be awarded an HD for this assignment students must meet all the requirements of the Distinction standard, outlined above, but to a highly sophisticated and insightful standard.

The plan is justified through a mature and engaging rationale that provides clear and compelling evidence of wide reading, insightful understanding, and engagement in the unit’s learning materials.

Thorough attention to editing and proofreading processes ensures that there are no errors in referencing, spelling, grammar, or punctuation.

If the assessment fails to reach a satisfactory standard on each of the criteria, then it must be awarded a fail