A .

Commentary:

King’s Baptist Grammar School

King’s Baptist Grammar School is an R-12 Christian School in the North Eastern Suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. My main mentor-teacher Sarah Amey
teaches the same cohort of year 8 students for HASS, English, and Pastoral. She also teaches a year 9 Civics and Global Citizenship class as well as two
permanent relief lessons, a year 6 and a year 7 Civics class. All these classes are all co-ed.

The students whom I spent most of my time with was the year 8 cohort.

These are the considerations of this class

EALD
In this class every student spoke English as their first language.

ATSI
There were none known to have ATSI heritage

Gifted
There were two boys in the class who could be considered gifted. One excels in humanities and STEM subjects while the other excelled primarily in STEM
subjects.

Disabilities
No student in the class had a diagnosed disability.

Gender Ratio
10 Males: 18 Females

Support Staff
No Support Staff are used in any lessons for this class.

Previous Content focus

In English, the previous focus had been on a group literature review of a book with a holocaust theme. Students were asked to pick one of five books and
group up with other students who read the same book as them. Each group was assessed together having a prepared discussion about their book.
Content Focus
The focus on this four-week sequence was creative and narrative writing. Each lesson would begin with 10 minutes of silent, hand-written, creative-
narrative writing which the students would do in their English exercise book. This task served as a way to settled the class down as soon as they entered the
lesson, provide practice to incorporate the skills which were being taught, and a way to help students to enjoy the subject.

ICT
Each student had their own laptop, with access to the internet. However, for the creative writing tasks at the start of the lesson, laptops were deliberately
not used. This was to ensure that students did not keep editing the work they had written, but instead spent their time being creative and adding more to
their narrative.

B. Student case study:

Date of Birth / Age Gender First Language Comments on social, physical, and intellectual development
13 M English Gifted
Student A

Student B 13 F English Typical

Student C 13 M English Limited Expressive communication

Collected data e.g. subject results, student reports, student Analysis of academic achievement Specific learning goals
including capabilities in SAE; How you
work samples, class teacher’s observations will use the data to inform your goal setting

Student A Student reports, previous English assessments, discussions with After each lesson’s narrative writing I Extended literary skills to be explored. Try
mentor teacher. would inspect the students work and to use creativity.
assess how well they are progressing and
decide what need to be focused.

Discuss each day’s writing with the student

and ask them what they think they would
like to improve.

Allow students to give constructive

 criticism to each other’s work.

Student B Student reports, previous English assessments, discussions with After each lesson’s narrative writing I Competent, but needs more confidence.
mentor teacher would inspect the students work and
assess how well they are progressing and
decide what need to be focused.

Discuss each day’s writing with the student

and ask them what they think they would
like to improve.

Allow students to give constructive

criticism to each other’s work.

Student C Student reports, previous English assessments, discussions with After each lesson’s narrative writing I Needs more help in expressive writing skills
mentor teacher would inspect the students work and
assess how well they are progressing and
decide what need to be focused.

Discuss each day’s writing with the student

and ask them what they think they would
like to improve.

Allow students to give constructive

criticism to each other’s work.

Student A
Comment on the social, physical, and intellectual development which may impact learning and teaching.
2. Collect and analyse data that has been used to assess the 3 students’ current level of academic achievement including their capabilities in Standard Australian English
(SAE).
3. Use the data analysis to set challenging/achievable learning goals for each of the three case study students. Learning goals should be based on student learning needs,
as well as the content to be taught.

This student, a 13 year old male has received the highest grades in the English class. He is confident, cable and offers answers whenever the teacher poses a question to the
class. He does not have any behavioural issues and will work well individually and in a group.
Amongst the teachers I observed that he is spoken of highly and is perhaps even at risk of being moved to a more prestigious school to be even further challenged. This
may be only speculation on the teachers behalf or it may be something that the parents have mentioned. Student A excels in all of his classes and is pleasant and sociable.

During his first narrative writing task, he made his friends the topic and aimed to be funny by saying silly or embarrassing things about his friends, which were all good
natured and received well. I challenged him and said that I am happy for people to be funny or silly, since I think they are both elements of creativity, but I placed a new
rule of not being able to use class member’s names, since I said it was a cheap laugh and not that clever. He thought about this and no longer used fellow student’s names
but chose to try to be funny in other ways.

Student B
Comment on the social, physical, and intellectual development which may impact learning and teaching.
2. Collect and analyse data that has been used to assess the 3 students’ current level of academic achievement including their capabilities in Standard Australian English
(SAE).
3. Use the data analysis to set challenging/achievable learning goals for each of the three case study students. Learning goals should be based on student learning needs,
as well as the content to be taught.

Student B, a 13 year old female is sociable, articulate and her stories showed some talent that I was excited to encourage. She has the potential to improve with some
direction and encouragement.

She sits with a group of students who are very talkative and her largest challenge seems to be distraction. This class has a higher amount of females and the group can get
very loud when the students talk to one another. The group that this girl is a part of does nt seem to take learning very seriously and need to be managed for them to stay
on task.

Student C
Comment on the social, physical, and intellectual development which may impact learning and teaching.
2. Collect and analyse data that has been used to assess the 3 students’ current level of academic achievement including their capabilities in Standard Australian English
(SAE).
3. Use the data analysis to set challenging/achievable learning goals for each of the three case study students. Learning goals should be based on student learning needs,
as well as the content to be taught.

Student C a 13-year-old male, who is friendly and sociable. Although liked by his peers, he is a little socially awkward and is likely on the AD spectrum, he does not have an
ILP. Student C is among the two lowest achieving students in the class. With a tendency to fixate, he can produce high quality work when it aligns with an interest of his.
Allowing Student C to make meaningful choices about what he does for his assessment will be key in helping him succeed.