Precis

Rikki Duff
The Numeracy in Action (EDCU11022) course built substantial knowledge of mathematics curriculum and pedagogy, consequently, this assessment item required the demonstration of knowledge both declarative and procedural relating directly to the Australian Curriculum (ACARA) and pedagogical design for learning throughout formation to year 9 under the content descriptor Number and Place Value. A wikispace has been formed and worked on over time collaboratively to demonstrate and display many items such as issues and challenges with the curriculum expectations for a specific level and standards. Included there is also a graphic organiser with literature based responses to these challenges and responses taken from the national curriculum. There were various innovative understandings and learning outcomes obtained from this task, these include:


 * A thorough understanding of the Australian curriculum and the content descriptors.
 * A better knowledge on the layout and plan the curriculum has (from content descriptors to the actual primary grades formation through to year 10).
 * The importance of declarative and procedural knowledge and how it relates specifically to learning for students.
 * An understanding of the many issues and challenges an educator is faced with when planning and implementing curriculum to classroom activities – whether students will understand and comprehend an activity is key to the lesson layout.
 * The process of adding to and contributing to a group task, working collaboratively successfully to reach the end goal of completing the task.
 * To create a wikispace with information to be accessed by the lecturer and both group members, working over the internet with a spreadsheet.
 * An understanding of the diverse needs of students from every year level (different abilities in the classroom effect how the learning manager implements the lesson) and how to cater to their strengths and needs in a mathematics lesson therefore creating an overall productive learning experience.
 * An obtained sense of responsibility to the students learning – a realisation of the accountability of teachers: if the students have not learnt the intended learning outcome, the educator has not taught it.

Overall this written assessment item was proven to be an effective learning experience for me as a future educator in understanding and implementing the Australian Curriculum under the subject of Mathematics; Number and Place Value. It contributed innovative knowledge of not only the diverse needs of students but how to cater to arising potential issues and challenges, therefore creating productive learning experiences to the learners.

Suzanne McKenna
During assessment item one for EDCU11022 Numeracy in Action, I realised how much I have learnt about being a Learning Manager, but also how much more there is for me to and learn in order to be a successful Learning Manager. I must admit that I find the ACARA website and documents are much easier to navigate around then previous curriculums which makes planning lessons, units and university assigments a much easier task than in the past.

I did however, find it quite difficult to re-word the elaborations in our chosen strand. I think that creating procedural (and declarative) knowledge statements is easier when you have a specific idea and activity in your head. Having a long list of elaborations was quite daunting when I realised that each elaboration needed to be made into procedural knowledge, and then this was the starting point of the declarative knowledge. I think in previous lesson plans for EPL I generally organise my declarative knowledge first so that it informs my procedural knowledge, but in this assignment I worked in reverse.

As previously stated, this task has made me realise that I still have a long way to go before I am 'job-ready' as a teacher. Just focussing on one strand of the mathematics curriculum has emphasised how much content knowledge is required in thed education industry. Teaching students the basic and fundamental concepts of mathematics is such an important responsibility which requires 100% accuracy from the teachers and learning managers to ensure that the students are given all of the correct information to enable them to develop an understaning of maths in an educational environment which will also assist them in high school and through to adulthood and the workforce. If the teachers and learning managers are not confident with the curriculum content, and not capable of presenting these ideas and concepts accurately to their students, then this will have a negative effect on the students not only at their current level of study, but well into the future when it will probably be too late to undo any misconceptions and mistakes that were made at such an important stage of the learners' lives.

I enjoyed this assessment task because it forced me to address some of my own issues that I have with mathematical ideas and techniques that I frequently use. This task has given me the opportunity to re-visit some concepts which I don't think I ever really fully understood during school. The prescribed text for this course was a bit over-whelming for me, but I found a text book (Booker et al.) I had used for a previous course extremely helpful and written in a way which gave straightforward and hands-on ideas to use in conjunction with the ACARA website.

Generally speaking, I would have to admit that I do not currently feel 100% confident or capable of being able to provide quality maths lessons to a class at this point in time. I am more than happy with my other teaching techniques (such as behaviour management, and classrosom management) but would really love to be able to have the content knowledge required to provide students with a professional and content rich learning experience which is overflowing with correct and appropriate facts and knowledge.