Australian Professional Teacher Standard: 4.4 – Maintain Student Safety
During my placement my Year 10 class were given allocated time during their classes to complete their assessment task. For their task they were required to create a film trailer for ‘Tomorrow When The War Began’. This required them to walk around the school in order to film in areas that would benefit their trailer. The school had hills and had construction occurring so in these lessons I had to manage and maintain the students safety. This meant that I had to watch all three of the groups while trying not to restrict their freedom too much as they all need to film in certain and different areas.
At first this was quite stressful as I did not want to hinder their assessment tasks but I also wanted to ensure that the students were safe at all times.
For these lessons I linked the humanist approach heavily. The lessons were centred around the students needs and that allows them to grow. This was reflected through their lessons and their results. I discussed with the students as a class what would happen when they went out to start filming. This being that they must all always be in my line of sight. If one group needed to go to a certain area they would need to come and ask me and everyone would go to the same area for that period of time. The students were not to walk off to a different area without telling me. This required the students to work not just in their groups but as a class to ensure that everyone would be able to film in the areas that they needed to.
A study has shown that ‘Teachers’ perceptions of the educational potential of outdoor teaching included increased motivation, communication and participation among students. Another perception was that the shared experiences in the outdoor environment could become a valuable starting point for subsequent indoor learning and that outdoor teaching could expand upon and strengthen indoor teaching.’ (Fagerstam, 2013) While the study does show the benefits, it is imperative that there are still pre-cautions taken to ensure the safety of the students.
After completing my placement I was able to reflect on these lessons and see how well they went. The students were safe the entire time and the results they produced were incredible.
EDFX348 Reflective Blog 