Summary of reviewed ILP and proposals for my CPD

In the Stage 3 of my Individual Learning Plan I have undertaken a self-diagnosis of my strengths and development needs of my teaching practice and my written assignments. For this stage I have drawn on feedback from my teaching and my third and fourth assignments. The feedback was given from my mentor at the College and from my personal tutor at the Institute.

Practical teaching

In relation to my professional practice, I consider that my key strengths are the following: I use resources, such as PowerPoint and the Interactive Whiteboard effectively; during my teaching practice I have tried different teaching techniques and by the end of my placement I have been able to use different and varied techniques effectively; I am able to manage different levels of understanding effectively.

One of my development needs set at the ILP was to check learners’ understanding and learning outcomes throughout the lesson. When planning the lessons, I plan the activities in order to make sure that I check students’ understanding and learning outcomes throughout the lesson. I normally start with an initial activity where I assess my students’ understanding at the beginning of the lesson. I check learning during the lesson with different activities and open or direct questioning. I normally finish the lesson with a summary, a quiz or another type of activity to ensure that students have achieved the learning outcomes. Nevertheless, I feel that sometimes I do not check if everybody understood, especially the less active students. In my future practice, I will make those students participate more and I will take and revise students’ work in order to check their learning in a more effectively.

In my future practice I will try all students to participate as much as possible rather than some of them to dominate. I will involve the less active students when I ask directed questions and I will get them to demonstrate exercises on the whiteboard. I will build up their confidence by starting with the easier questions and exercises.

I will also make sure that everybody is listening when a student is speaking. I will ensure that the other students can hear when someone is speaking. I will ask the student to speak louder, turn round, stand up or whatever is necessary in that particular situation.

Literacy/Written Communication skills

In my last assignments I have shown that I have good knowledge and understanding of curriculum models as well as a number of pedagogical theories. The structure of my assignments is clear and coherent.

In my future assignments I need to check if each element of the assignment brief has been covered. I will aim for full justification of the points analysed in my written assignments.