Ready to Teach Early Childhood: Practicum 5E

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.


Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:
1. Assess children’s learning in collaboration with families and children in a variety of ways that lead to a deep and broad basis for planning relevant national and/ or state or territory curriculum that supports further learning [APST 1 – 5].
2. Design, implement and evaluate curriculum that builds on identified long- and short-term, group and individual goals [APST 1 – 5].
3. 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 [APST 1 – 5].
4. Develop teaching strategies that respond to and build on children’s strengths and that take account of diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds [APST 1 – 5].
5. Create rich learning environments inside and outside [APST 1 – 5].
6. Demonstrate teaching performance, responsibility for the curriculum and professional readiness at an appropriate standard for a graduate teacher [APST1-7].