Standard 4 - Create and Maintain Supportive & Safe Learning Environments
Standard Summary: This standard encourages educators to "(4.1) support student participation" by implementing "inclusive strategies that engage and support all students" (AITSL, 2014). Standard 4 is also about managing and maintaining classroom activities, challenging behaviour, student safety and using ICT in a safe, responsible and ethical way (AITSL, 2014).
Reflective Commentary: Situation In order to incorporate ICT into my lessons I use many YouTube clips as attention gainers or to show an authentic situation. Upon reviewing video clips before showing them to the class I realised that many had ads with either irrelevant or inappropriate content, so I researched ways that the ads can be eliminated.
Action I obtained a program called 'Adblock for Youtube' which enabled me to use YouTube safely, responsibly and ethically as it deletes theads that pop up before you can access the actual clip.
Outcome I was able to be confident in providing students with engaging online content that was appropriate and ethical.
Action Plan An aspect of Standard 4 that I am yet to gain experience in is focus area "4.3 manage challenging behaviour" (AISTL, 2014). At all of my practicums I was privileged with classes of well behaved students. In order to be exposed to challenging behaviour and how teachers manage this behaviour I plan to observe some teachers at my internship placement school who teach "challenging" classes. I will make note of the strategies these teachers use and endeavour to implement them in future teaching pursuits.