PART A: Unit overview

Prepare/plan a unit overview. The summative assessment for the unit will be the assessment task that informed your Assignment 1. By beginning with the assessment task, you will link to the relevant curriculum and backward map to plan the content and literacies that will need to be taught during the unit. The overview must:

1. Include appropriate strategies for teaching the relevant literacies;
2. Show how you would scaffold learning, use formative assessment to inform your teaching of literacies, and cater for the diverse learners in the class;
3. List the specific resources that will be used. Include texts of different types (e.g., print, oral, digital, as well as human resources/people where appropriate). Make sure you name the actual texts. There is no need to list everyday classroom resources such as pens, highlighters, whiteboard etc.
4. Provide a sequence of activities. This will be the largest section of the overview.

Make sure that you consider situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing and transformed practice. These, however, will not be 'named' on the overview, but they will guide your thinking and planning.

PART B: Lesson plan

From the sequence of activities in Part A, create one lesson which demonstrates that you can plan for the explicit instruction of one aspect of the writing task in the summative assessment. Make sure that you show how you would scaffold learning, how formative assessment would be used and how you would cater for the diverse students in the class.

PART C: Reflection: Using the 4Rs model

Write a critical reflection based on the model of critical reflection in Chapter 11 of the course textbook, and using prompt questions from the 4RS model on your capabilities against the AITSL Graduate Professional Standard 2.5:

'Know and understand literacy and numeracy teaching strategies and their application in teaching areas.'

Use specific examples from your unit and lesson planning in this assignment to illustrate your points of discussion.

Teaching is a method that enlightens the students with necessary information about a particular subject. The range of subjects is quite wide and, evidently, it involves a myriad of strategies to source the knowledge to the students. It is very difficult to come with the best teaching practices in all platforms of teaching as the different settings of the institution and classroom, age, and cultural background of the students are significant factors to create an impact on teaching (Anstey & Bull, 2006). According to the Australian Standard of teaching and learning, five types of learning methods are applied to the students, which are active learning, case studies, collaborative learning, inquiry-based learning, inquiry-based learning, just-in-time teaching, peer learning, pear-led team learning, problem-based learning, small group learning and team-based learning. By relevant literacies, the Australian Curriculum asserts that a student must learn to listen, read, view, speak and write the English language.

In other words, the Australian Curriculum aims to develop good knowledge and communication skills. Along with the language, the Australian Curriculum also emphasises science literacy. For the students of elementary and junior high levels, the best strategy will be active learning (Unsworth, 2001). The teacher directly involves the students in the learning process through some activities such as discussion, reading, writing, problem-solving etc. As there are many students in this school who speak in other Australian languages or dialects of aboriginals, it is necessary to encourage and motivate the students to speak, read and write English and, more importantly, understand the content of the literacy.

Scaffold Learning

Scaffolding is a term used in the context of teaching and learning to break down the teaching and learning process so that it becomes easier for the students to absorb and digest the knowledge (Coiro et al. 2014). It is the prime responsibility of a teacher to guide and instruct the students in the simplest way so that the actual purpose of knowledge dispersing is achieved. The prime goal of teaching is that at the end of the process, the student must learn, remember and apply the knowledge wherever and whenever required (Dudeney, &Hockly, 2016). The Australian Curriculum includes a few steps of scaffold learning for teaching the science unit “Evolution” to the student populace, which comprises around 12% of Australian aboriginals and 5% of EAL/D students (Henderson, 2012).

Firstly, a concept map for each literacy of Evolution, namely comparative anatomy, DNA, Fossils, Embryology, Tree of Life and Vestigial Structures should be prepared, and each map should include graphics, diagrams and images. As this unit will focus only on vestigial structures, the teacher should start with verbally introducing, define and explaining vestigial structures in brief.

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