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Year 2 English and HASS – Drought

 

Introduction

 

Year 2 in Harrison School, in the Australian Capital Territory, comprises diverse learners. Students have dynamic learning styles; they come from diverse cultural groups and belong to different socio-economic classes. An urgent need to incorporate digital learning in the teaching pedagogies during the Covid-19 pandemic between 2020 to 2022 pushed teaching professionals to undergo several webinars and online training sessions.

The curriculum areas in focus are the Science aspect from HASS and English for Year 2. The science component will cover the “nature and development of science, particularly “involving observing, asking questions about, and describing changes in objects and events (ACSHE034)” (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2018). The English component will encompass language, text structure and organisation. Students will “understand how texts are made cohesive through, including associations, synonyms, and antonyms (ACELA1464).”

Cyber security for early years learners is paramount. Edwards (2021, p. 397)  mentioned that “not all young children were actively supervised online during periods of enforced home learning when parents or family members were otherwise occupied with work or caring duties.” When digital technology is integrated with other learning areas, students tend to be more cooperative, social, independent and expressive of their emotions. Newhouse (2017, p. 47) explained that “these technologies are not a new way of teaching; rather, it is supporting good teaching to be more effective.”

The Rationale explains how it was possible to create inclusive learning experiences to cater for diverse learners. Through reflecting on the creation of the website, a range of networking, organisation and knowledge gaps were identified. A Personal Professional Learning Plan is included, which identifies these gaps and sources of learning to expand my skills and understanding to better support all students.

Rationale 

Using digital technologies successfully is important since young children's academic and psychosocial identities are also emerging within the social and cultural worlds in which they live (Holland and Lachicotte, 2001, as cited in Rice and Cun, 202, p. 1824). Play-based lessons encourage self-regulated learning, and according to Ebbeck and Waniganayake (2016, as cited in Johnston, Hayfield and Hadley, 2018,  p. 898), children learn best in play-based situations that reflect their home cultures and experiences.

Universal design for learning principles helps all learners regardless of instructional modality. "Optimising individual choice and autonomy increases student interest in learning as this provides students with many choices and allows them to connect to the learning resources" (Nave, 2020, p. 30). Thus, according to Nelson (2014, p. 43), the design of the learning environment, including the content, must empower students to demonstrate their highest level of independence as they recognise themselves as learners and how to facilitate their learning.

Multimodal resources have been utilised as they are engaging for all students. "Pupils not only engage in the multimodal redesign by verbal linguistics in a situated learning context, but they also communicate their experiences through multimodal redesign, which enhances their conceptual understanding (Tomlinson, 2013, as cited in Oman and Hashemi, 2015, p. 140).

A video for the online read-aloud session includes auto-generated captions to cater for students with listening disabilities. A short video on drought is included to support the retention of information, and an interactive lesson on adjectives will enhance students' motivation to participate. Additionally, "gamified learning is included in the lesson to make it fun. The effectiveness of gamification in learning is due to the premise that students can gain fun from gamified learning content, environments, and activities, leading to increased motivation and improved learning behaviours" (Buckley & Doyle, 2016, as cited in Li and Chu, 2021, p. 162).

"Learning communities that use the potential of information and communication technologies (ICT)  are becoming increasingly important as a means of fostering teachers' digital competencies" (Seufert, Guggemos and Tarantini, 2020, p. 160). Furthermore, students can be provided with a diverse set of opportunities to master digital fluency, an aspect that "requires excellent communication skills, new media literacy, and cognitive load management to address the issues and concerns we face today and in the future" (Sparrow, 2018, p. 54).

Furthermore, a flipped classroom model can enhance teaching practice and deliver better students' cognitive learning outcomes and motivation in a wide range of subjects and educational levels (Giannakos et al., 2014, as cited in Kostaris, Sergis, Sampson, Giannakos and Pelliccione, 2017, p. 261). Students' online safety will also be factored in to maintain students' mental health and well-being, which would be done through "teaching digital citizenship and digital media literacy to support critical thinking and civic engagement education" (eSafety Commissioner, 2021).