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Artefact 1: Free Choice Board (Reinke, 2012)

The first artifact being examined is a free choice board on the


subject of art history. This is a very common and useful strategy,
particularly in a class with students of differing strengths,
weaknesses and intelligence types. This approach gives the
students several choices as to the types of activity they would like

to undertake for the related lesson, and allows them to display their
progress or mastery of a concept through a medium they are more
confident in and have a better understanding of. Effectively it allows
students to choose how they will learn a concept and how they will
display this learning (Reinken, 2012). It also adds a large amount of
variety to the learning experience of the students, which is
important when attempting to instill the intrinsic drive to learn
within students. The choice board pictured above has activities
separated via a system that mirrors Gardners theory of multiple
intelligences (Woolfolk & Margetts, 2013), which acknowledges eight
separate intelligences that a human can possess, and has also
added computer intelligence to accommodate technologically skilled
learners.
This activity type can be related back to Standard 5.1 of the AITSL
Graduate Standards for Professional Practice, which states
Demonstrate understanding of assessment strategies, including
formal, diagnostic, formative and summative approaches to assess
student learning. (AITSL, 2014) This is because it can be used be
used to facilitate either a formative or summative assessment. Prior
to creating a choice board, a teacher would first conduct a
diagnostic assessment on the topic to assess the base
understanding the students possess, the results of which would
direct their selection of the nature, difficulty and timing of activities.
The differentiated activities that can be undertaken using this
resource also allow a multi-faceted and accommodating approach to
assessing student learning. In my current prac classroom it would be
more appropriate for me to differentiate the activities in a choice
board based on difficulty level rather than the concept of multiple
intelligences, as there are three children in my class with significant
reading and learning difficulties and one child with Autism Spectrum
Disorder.

Artefact 2: Exit Ticket (Wakeford, 2013)

I came across this artifact being used during one of my practical


observation visits to a year 1 class at Atwell Primary School, where it
was used during a modelled reading and comprehension lesson of a

text known as Wayambe the Turtle


(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpzDvpZ0hMg). At the
beginning of the lesson, students filled out the first box with a
sentence or two predicting what the story would be about
(Predicting was the reading strategy of the fortnight), and were
told to come down to the mat as the video story of Wayambe the
Turtle was played on the projector. After watching this twice, and
having a whole-class discussion about the conventions of the story,
the students returned to their desks and filled out this exit ticket.
The teacher went around the class and asked four students (of
varying reading abilities) to share a point from either their summary
or their main idea section. Once complete, this was collected up by
the teacher for marking and the students went off to music. The
simple structure of this activity accommodated well for the vast
differences in reading ability that are present in this particular class,
meaning that it was straight-forward enough for the less developed
students to complete while not restricting the more highly
developed readers in the class. While this activity was being
completed, the teacher and I walked around the classroom giving
instant feedback to students.
Exit tickets are a valuable resource that can easily be incorporated
into any learning area. They require the student to perform some
cognitive synthesis of the content that was studied in the lesson,
can challenge the student to apply the new knowledge from the
lesson by using questioning, and can provide instant feedback to a
teacher about student understanding and the effectiveness of their
lesson (Wakeford, 2013). This strategy relates directly to AITSL
Graduate Standard 5.4, which requires teachers to demonstrate the
capacity to interpret student assessment data to evaluate student
learning and modify teaching practice. This is because exit tickets
are primarily a formative assessment strategy, and the information
gathered from student performance in this activity can provide a

snapshot of a students understanding, while also dictating the


direction and formation of future learning activities.

Artifact 3: Dry-Erase Boards

Dry-erase boards or mini-whiteboards are frequently used in my


year 1 prac class at Atwell Primary School. On a visit earlier this
semester, I observed the boards being utilized to great effect during
a mathematics lesson involving subtracting 2-digit numbers. The
children were all sitting on the mat in front of the whiteboard as the
teacher wrote out subtraction problems, which the students were to
set out in an algorithm on their whiteboard and complete.
The students were given a minute or so to complete each problem,
after which the teacher would ask the students to hold up their
whiteboards and show their solution to the problem. The teacher
would pick a couple of students who were correct each time to

explain the working for a small portion of the problem, which meant
students who had not done it correctly were not singled out and had
a chance to listen, observe the work of their peers and change their
solutions accordingly. After this activity was complete the students
returned to their desks to complete work from their course book,
while the teacher wrote anecdotal notes on certain students
performance.
Mini-whiteboards are very effective differentiated teaching tool for a
number of reasons. They encourage consistent student engagement
and contribution, and they are erasable which can help to overcome
confidence issues some students may have with their handwriting or
fine motor skills (Dodge, 2009). Mini-whiteboards also provide an
instant informal formative assessment when the students hold their
work up to show the teacher, as the teacher can tell which students
are grasping new knowledge, which students are not quite
understanding concepts, and how they should adjust their current
lesson to best accommodate this information (Dodge, 2009).
Feedback is also instantaneous and easily understood when using
these boards as teachers can verbally correct students as soon as
they see their work or can demonstrate for them on their
whiteboard. This activity aligns with AITSL Graduate Standards 5.1,
5.2 and 5.4 (AITSL, 2014). This is because it is a reliable and easily
facilitated method of informal formative assessment, it allows the
possibility of timely and relevant feedback that can be instantly
applied, and allows teachers to use the information they are being
presented with on the students whiteboards to direct the remainder
of their current lesson and future lessons.

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