Reflections Reviewing Development of Professional Teaching
Areas targeted for Development at the Start of the Course
The areas which I aimed to develop at the start of the course were mainly those related to feedback and communication skills. In fact, I wanted to enhance my communication skills to make sure that all students understand my explanations, demonstrations and cues to facilitate their learning. Through better communication skills, feedback is also improved. Feedback is beneficial for all pupils since it helps them in their skill execution, behaviour and assists learning.
I deemed such areas as needing development due to the primary fact that my classmates and I used to discuss how our Physical Education teacher in secondary school possessed a great level of feedback and communication skills. I was aware of the importance which both aspects have on a PE lesson since through the good use of encouragement, teaching cues, praise and concise but efficient explanations one can further guide students to grasp the main lesson objectives.
Was I Successful in Achieving these Goals?
I was quite successful in reaching these set objectives which I targeted for development at the start of the course. I can affirm this from the feedback which my tutors gave me throughout the three years teaching practice experiences. I improved my feedback and communication skills throughout the course and this facilitated learning for all children as they comprehended better what was expected of them. Through good communication skills I offered concise and better explanations to learners. Communication skills also helped me how to tackle certain unexpected situations which may arise from time to time during a lesson. Moreover, I noticed that my feedback was efficient during my teaching practice experience since several pupils used to pinpoint certain mistakes they were doing during a particular exercise or skill execution, providing feedback to one another in the course of doing so.
How did my Teaching Skills improve throughout the Course?
Throughout the course I experienced a good level of improvement in several teaching skills. I can affirm that every exercise, class activity, micro teaching experience, teaching practice and assignment all influenced the development of my teaching skills. In fact all these occurrences aided me in bettering certain skills I possessed and to emerge other skills I did not utilise before.
Before enrolling for this course, I knew the essentiality of integrating the fun factor in every lesson a Physical Education teacher delivers. I also knew how important feedback and communication are for a teacher from the coaching I was subject to and from the experience at secondary school. However I did not realise the importance of certain skills such as handling time management well, having a good degree of time on task and achieving smooth transitions. I came aware of such competences during the first few months of the course. From here onwards I did my best to enhance these skills due to their importance when teaching kids. Moreover, I started to learn how to pace the lesson well, how to carry out an adequate delivery, how to perform an effective closure to the lesson, how to utilise space and equipment appropriately. I can confirm that these proficiencies have nowadays improved substantially mainly thanks to the guidance of my University lecturers and my colleagues from whom I learned a lot.
I also learned how to construct a suitable theory lesson focusing on the topics in question thanks to the wide spectrum of exposure we were given regards presentation assignments and thanks to the theory lessons we were subject to. During my last teaching practice I delivered around twenty five Physical Educational theory lessons on varying topics part of the PE SEC syllabus. Such experience helped me further in getting to know how to plan, prepare and deliver a theory lesson to children. Here I managed to develop several teaching skills such as managing group work in class, building lessons according to the children’s age and abilities, handling and correcting classwork and using innovative methodologies in order to motivate students. Finally through various assignments I completed during this course, I also improved my administrative and organisational skills.
Areas of Strength at the End of the Course
At the end of this course I can state that I have developed in a holistic way. I believe that my areas of strength are implementing the fun element within the lessons I deliver, the commitment I put forward when teaching, my communication and organisational skills and last but not least, the love and passion for teaching and for sports. Albeit this, I believe that there is always room for improvement and I am a person who never ceases to try and learn new and innovative things while ensuring to update my present theories, skills and views.
