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Part A- Explanation of Focus Areas.

1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Graduate- Demonstrate knowledge of teaching strategies that are responsive to the learning
strengths and needs of students from diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic
backgrounds.
The lesson plan involves teaching strategies that demonstrate knowledge that are
responsive to students of diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds. It
does this by first showing a variety of different female figures that are both nationally and
internationally influential and asks the students to distinguish through raising of hands whether
these women are influential for the students. The lesson plan incorporates the different
backgrounds as the educator allows students to select what part of the presentation (that is
presented later) each student will be responsible for. This teaching strategy lets students
distinguish which areas they are strong in and plays to these strengths as they contribute
something small that assists the presentation in its success. By doing this, the teacher promotes
autonomy among students, and contributes a positive learning environment, wherein students are
encouraged to learn how they see fit.
1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full
range of abilities.
Graduate - Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of strategies for differentiating teaching
to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities.
The lesson plan differentiates teaching to meet the specific learning of students across the
full range of abilities. This lesson plan incorporates different levels of abilities into the educators
prepared lesson through the idea that the class is focused on a single topic to make a presentation
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for; yet students select the method of learning they want to use in order to achieve their learning
outcomes. By allowing students to select which part of the presentation they want to work on,
along with the method they will use; whether it is computer, textbook, adding music or even a
voice script to the groups work it appeals to students who are top of the class and those who are
struggling. By integrating all unique forms of knowledge expression, the educator has created a
lesson that will get the class involved in the subject matter that they wish to teach and allowing
all students with ranging abilities to be able to participate within this activity.
2.2 Content selection and organization
Graduate - Organise content into an effective learning and teaching sequence.
The lesson plan organizes content into an effective learning and teaching sequence as it
provides a natural progression of the content for students. First students are introduced to the
topic through a slideshow of influential women, asking the class to raise their hands if these
women hold importance for them then the class is shown Lady Gaga and asked to discuss why
she is or is not an influential woman and make a one to two-minute presentation regarding how
her song Born this Way created controversy. The lesson progresses naturally with a flow that
begins by selecting well known influential women, getting the class to discuss if Lady Gaga fits
among these women and presenting on the topic in a way that will promote children selecting
their own opinions.
4.1 Support student participation
Graduate - Identify strategies to support inclusive student participation and engagement in
classroom activities.
The educator has created a lesson plan that implements strategies that support inclusive
student participation and engagement in classroom activities. The educator has done this by
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setting learning goals that are achievable and challenges students of varying abilities by making
the task an opinion based activity. The lesson plan provides an idea for the students to think
about and form an opinion, meaning that they cant be wrong provided they give evidence to
reinforce their ideas. The students are then asked to put this opinion into action and create a
presentation as a group that expands upon this idea and critique whether Lady Gagas song is
controversial or revolutionary using their own knowledge as well as the people in their group to
form an opinion they deem satisfactory, through use of student participation.
Part B- Report
Section 1.
The selected learning standards would cater to students learning needs in this particular
lesson plan as all the standards that are selected directly relate to student involvement and
different teaching strategies. By using the four standards selected it is evident that the educator
behind this lesson plan has put serious thought into incorporating student learning needs within
the creation of this lesson plan for their students. Although all of the focus areas are different,
they have the same goal of student integration into mainstream classroom; having strategies in
place that relate to each individual students diverse background, having the lesson plan be able
to be taught to a wide variety of students regardless of level, having the teaching sequence build
upon itself in order to provide a simple yet effective teaching method and encouragement of
student participation are all standards that cater to students learning needs
By having teaching strategies that incorporate the diverse linguistic, cultural, religious
and socioeconomic backgrounds of students, this focus area caters for student learning needs. By
including these students who may be at a disadvantage because of their backgrounds and
upbringings, this focus area intends to allow educators to address what issues certain students
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may have. By incorporating the autonomous learning model (Luke, 2011, pg. 150) to let students
decide the learning theyd like to partake in, this is an example of the focus area at work within
the field to cater to students with learning needs. In promoting certain teaching strategies such as
cross class interaction, (J. Park, 2013, pg. 2) students are catered to by using this focus area
within the classroom as the research suggests; that students with socioeconomic backgrounds not
favorable for their education benefit by working together with those that do. By having this focus
area within the teaching standards, it encourages educators to evaluate if their lesson plan is
appropriate to deal with these students and whether the lesson is catered to these specific barriers
that a particular student may have to overcome within a mainstream classroom.
The focus area of differentiating the style and strategies used within a classroom to teach
children of all abilities also assists in catering for student learning needs. By using different
techniques within a classroom not just the simplified options of paying extra attention to a
student or checking past assessment results to find the students weaknesses and strengths; this
focus area states that different ideas and teaching strategies must be put into practice in order to
accommodate those students with specific learning needs. This can include autonomous
decisions such as letting students decide the way in which they would prefer to learn but also
teacher involvement, creating lessons that are engaging yet approachable. By including Killens
(2012, pg.30) broad framework of structuring lessons through three guidelines; outcomes-based,
experience-based and content-based, more styles and strategies can be used within this focus area
to better accommodate students with learning needs. By having this focus area apart of the
teaching standards, educators will cater to students with learning needs through different
teaching styles and strategies in order to better suit their limitations.

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The focus area involving organizing lesson plans into effective learning and teaching
sequences is another focus area that caters for student learning needs. By creating a lesson plan
that introduces a concept or a certain type of knowledge to a student, and expands upon this idea
in a natural and fluid method allows a lesson to cater to children with special needs. For students
with special needs such as learning disabilities knowledge must be introduced slowly (Sibanda,
2015), but in mainstream classroom educators cannot afford to spend as much as time as they
would in a special needs classroom. To compensate for this problem, this focus area is included
so as to allow teachers to bypass this because as a student learns one concept in depth, more
knowledge can then be complemented by this concept and the student will retain more of this
information as they can relate it back to the one area in which they have remembered (Sibanda,
2015, pg.10). By incorporating effective learning and teaching sequences of syllabus through
organization as a focus area of the teaching standards children with special needs can be catered
to as lesson plans can be arranged to adhere to a certain students needs.
Student participation is a focus area that caters to students with special needs because it
focusses directly upon what the student is comfortable with speaking about, or if this comfort
with speaking in general is present. By implementing a focus on student participation into the
teaching standards as a focus area it allows both educators and student teachers to understand
and comprehend that student participation insinuates that the child is comfortable and confident
within their learning environment. As Hew (2012, pg. 3) explains, classroom discussion is
frequently dominated by students who know the content and are opinionated, by encouraging
student participation this assists in identifying students who may have learning needs within the
classroom. By presenting the teaching standard for educators that includes child integration into
classrooms, the advancement of catering to students with special needs is continued as teachers
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are expected to ensure that all children know the content and feel comfortable within a classroom
in order to express their knowledge in front of the educator and peers.
Section 2.
The student peer feedback assisted in forming the focus areas that would be used within the
assessment. All of the student feedback that was received stated that the effective teaching and
learning focus area was too generic, stating that all lesson plans are effectively created to
promote this effective teaching and learning. It was also stated that this focus area was very
similar to the focus areas mentioned above and that this similarity would only seem to discredit
the lesson plan by being unable to find different focus areas that reflected the research that the
educator has accomplished. By switching this focus area with encouragement of student
participation, the lesson plan demonstrates more deviation in the different teaching standards the
educator uses. From the feedback, there was nothing wrong with the approach that was taken and
only one standard of the four was irrelevant, with the included evaluation and editing of certain
sentences of the draft. Among these the other students gave feedback that implied that they
could not see many errors in the draft, and that it only needed to be refined and not drastically
altered or changed.

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References
Australian Curriculum Lessons. (2012).
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Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2016)
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Hess, Jana L., & Whittington, M. Susie. (2013). Developing an effective course syllabus:
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Hew, K., Cheung, Wing Sum, & Ebooks Corporation. (2012). Student Participation in Online
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Socioeconomic Diversity, Racial Diversity, and Student Reports of CrossClass

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Sibanda, D., & Hobden, P. (2015). Planning a Teaching Sequence for the Teaching of Chemical
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