Ben Davies | 3876629

Assessment 1: Health teaching inquiry project

Introduction
In semester one I undertook a four-week placement block at Footscray City College
teaching Health to two different year 8 classes. The first week I spent observing my
mentor Ida and the methods she employed when teaching the class. It became evident
relatively quickly who the difficult students were in each class. I kept a keen eye and
wrote down notes on how she dealt with these situations. The schools policy on this
was to give a warning to the student, followed by moving them to another spot in the
classroom to try and diffuse the situation. If that didnt work then they were sent to
the door for a specified time (usually 5 mins), students would then have to stay back
after class to be spoken to and if the misbehaved again in the meantime then they
would receive a lunchtime or afternoon detention depending on the severity of the
situation. At this point the student would be given an exit slip whereby they had to
report to the office and be relocated into a VCE class for the remainder of the double
period.

Both classes had a few students capable of poor behaviour, however there was one
standout in each class. In class 8b a boy by the name of Ali proved to be a handful on
a number of occasions. Whilst observing in my first week he managed to be sent to
the door in both classes. He was largely incapable of doing work for any reasonable
amount of time and was very disruptive to those around him and often ignored the
teachers instruction. And as every student had a laptop in the class, he would often be
caught playing games on it rather than doing the class activity both Ida and I would
implement in that particular class. Before commencing my first teaching class Ida
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showed me his folder for the year to date and there was barely any work in it, and the
work that was recorded was done to an unsatisfactory standard.

In 8E, my other health class, again one student stood out to the rest. His name was
Elijah. Ida told me of his situation early and his issues often explained some of his
poor behaviour. Elijah had been diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit
Hyperactive Disorder) and was on medication he took at school each day. His
behaviour fluctuated a lot between classes and often with the flick of a switch. One
minute hed be fine, the next hed disrupt other classmates and be unresponsive to any
instructions.

Research Plan
Ali and Elijah were well behind the rest of their respective classes in regards to the
work they had completed. I had to come up with a plan that needed to not only curb
their disruptive behaviour, but also increased their output in producing quality work.
Prior to the first class I took I spoke to my mentor Ida and discussed implementing
more group work activities in an attempt to get Ali and Elijah among other students
working together and therefore allowing less time for them to be distracted. It also
suited the sex-ed curriculum that I was set to deliver as one of the resource books I
was given had a range of group activities I could employ. Vygotsky (1978, p.79)
believes that we learn through our interactions and communications with others
around us and that the social environment influences the learning process. Even
though I implemented the same group activities for both classes, I still made sure I
still personalised each activity for both classes to make sure it had a positive impacts
for the class dynamics.

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Results: Analysis and discussion
After the first week of teaching Ali and his 8B class, I realised that the first time I
moved him away and split up the group of boys he usually had sitting around him, his
behaviour improved dramatically. The group activities were designed so that each
member of the group relied on all the other members in the group to complete the task
together so they could move to the next task. This meant that Ali had his fellow class
members to keep him on task. If he didnt finish then it would provide a negative
consequence to the group. Not only did this promote teamwork and a little leadership
in each group member, it was also nice to see that he was able to show some initiative
and lead the group at times in bringing new ideas to the group by the end of my fourweek block. Of course there were some hiccups at the start, some of his group
members at times grew frustrated by his lack of concentration on tasks at times, but he
definitely improved.

Differentiating instruction was important when dealing with each student. Hall (2002)
Defines it as recognising students varying background knowledge, readiness,
language, preferences in learning, interests, and to react responsively. Differentiated
instruction is a process to approach teaching and learning for students of differing
abilities in the same class. The intent of differentiating instruction is to maximize each
students growth and individual success by meeting each student where he or she is,
and assisting in the learning process. After taking over class 8E, I was prepared to
deal with Elijah head on early. I had planned to deal with him in a similar fashion to
Ali in permanently moving him away from the group of boys he usually sat with.
Elijah proved to be a much more unique case though. His behaviour was much more
erratic and was much harder to handle at times. In the second class I took, he was not

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having one of his good days and we had just started our first group activity for the
class. After a couple of warnings for misbehaving with the other male students he
usually sat with, I decided to walk over to and tell him to move. As expected he didnt
want to and said that he would be good. This is when the other teachers would always
just not empathise and move him, but this time I thought ok then. I made a deal with
him that if he misbehaved again that he would be moved permanently, he agreed and
from then on I didnt have to move him away from his friends for the whole
placement block. Doing something such as this I found to be so simple yet so
effective. By negotiating the deal with him I saw the empowerment it gave him when
he realised the responsibility he then had, he obviously wasnt used to it. In retrospect
I feel that he was quiet misunderstood, as a typical student with ADHD and teachers
didnt want to find a personalised solution to his case, yet I found it in such a simple
manner, by giving him responsibility.

Conclusion
At the completion of my four-week block I was pleasantly surprised with the
improvements in behaviour of both Ali and Elijah. It is worth mentioning that there is
still a long way to go for them and myself in appropriately handling these types of
situations moving forward. Ive learnt from this that each scenario needs to be
personalised on a case-by-case basis. The methods used to improve the behaviour of
one student may not be the same requires for another student. The action I took in
dealing with them in regards to my classroom management plan falls under the
following AITSL standards:

1.2 Understand how students learn

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1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students

across the full range of abilities

1.6 Strategies to support full participation of students with disability
3.3 Use teaching strategies.
4.1 Support student participation.
4.3 Manage challenging behaviour

Reference List
Australian Institute of Teaching and Leadership, Standards, viewed
6th August 2015.
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< http://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-forteachers/standards/list>
Hall, T. (2002). Differentiated instruction. Wakefield, MA: National Center on
Accessing the General Curriculum. Retrieved [6th August] from
http://www.cast.org/publications/ncac/ncac_diffinstruc.html
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction Between Learning and
Development. Mind and Society, p79-91.