Ready to Teach Early Childhood: Practicum 5E

Overview

In this unit, pre-service teachers will undertake a 20 day professional experience placement in an early childhood setting (3-5 years preschool program) under the supervision of approved mentors. This unit also ensures that pre-service teachers are "Ready to Teach" and meet the Australian Professional Standards for Graduate Teachers. Pre-service teachers will focus their direction towards the role of a teacher in an early childhood setting. This includes more advanced skills and additional knowledge for curriculum decision-making, including assessing children's interests, skills, knowledge and learning. This unit aims to provide pre-service teachers with experience to demonstrate competence against ALL the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST): Graduate Stage.

Unit learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

1. Investigate and evaluate a range of strategies to encourage children to become confident and involved learners, including developing critical skills of analysis, reasoning, problem-solving and decision-making
2. Design, implement, evaluate and assess curriculum that builds on identified long- and short-term, group and individual goals, including creating rich, safe indoor and outdoor learning environments
3. Develop teaching strategies based on national and/ or state or territory curriculumon that respond to and build on children’s strengths and that take account of diverse linguistic, cultural, religious, family and socioeconomic backgrounds
4. Design and implement learning programs to measure impact on student learning and wellbeing in ways that are responsive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, doing and being as well as of all diverse learners
5. Enact teaching performance, responsibility for the curriculum and professional readiness at an appropriate standard for a graduate teacher

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Assessment

It is a requirement that students achieve an overall pass grade for the Professional Experience Portfolio assessment task. This task is designed to evidence attainment of various Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and National Program Standards in line with external accreditation by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL).

Students who do not achieve an overall pass grade will, if feasible, be granted one additional opportunity to evidence their attainment of unmet requirements.

This requirement is aligned to the National Program Standard 5.4 that ensures providers work collaboratively with placement schools and systems to rigorously assess pre-service teachers against the Graduate Teacher Standards.

Content

• Learning content/ subject discipline areas for early childhood education
• Health and safety considerations
• Diversity, difference and inclusion
• Designing learning environments
• Organising the curriculum (including routines, transitions, timing, choices)
• Documenting planning decisions
• Assessing children’s learning
• Transition to school
• Inquiry-based and problem-solving approaches
• Diversity and individual differences
• Maintaining safe and challenging learning environments
• Tools and practices for assessing, recording and reporting on children’s learning
• The use of ICT to communicate and to plan, implement and evaluate curriculum
• Code of ethics
• Graduate early childhood teacher standards
• Advocacy
• Graduate Attribute – Communication Skills: Verbal communication
• Graduate Attribute – Communication Skills: Communicating using different media
• Graduate Attribute – Teamwork Skills: Collaboration and negotiation
• Graduate Attribute – Teamwork Skills: Teamwork roles and processes
• Graduate Attribute – Digital Literacies: Information literacy
• Graduate Attribute – Digital Literacies: Technical literacy