Engage

VELS Info:
The teacher fosters positive relations with and between students and develops shared expectations for learning and interacting. They stimulate interest and curiosity, promote questioning and connect learning to real world experiences. The teacher structures tasks, elicits students’ prior knowledge and supports them to make connections to past learning experiences They present a purpose for learning , determining challenging learning goals and making assessment and performance requirements clear. The teacher assists students to consider and identify processes that will support the achievement of the learning goals.

Capabilities:
  • Develops shared norms
  • Determines readiness for learning
  • Establishes learning goals
  • Develops metacognitive capacity

Level 4:
The teacher refers to shared norms in their interactions with students and shares responsibility with them for reinforcing protocols. The teacher uses all available evidence to determine each individual student’s current level of understanding. They use questions generated by students to extend the focus of learning and to connect with students’ lives. The teacher supports students to use evidence to personalise their learning goals and align them with curriculum standards. The teacher provides assessment rubrics, illustrating increasing levels of proficiency based on curriculum standards. They support students to evaluate their own and others’ thinking. The teacher facilitates processes for students to monitor the effectiveness of their learning.

VELS Progression Points for this section:
Interdisciplinary Learning - Information and Communications Technology -
ICT for visualising thinking - Progression Point 3.5 -
use of unfamiliar software such as databases, and a range of manipulation techniques, to represent and explore processes
Discipline-based Learning - The Humanities - Geography -
Geographic knowledge and understanding - Progression Point 3.25 -
identification of natural processes; for example, rainfall and flood, earth movements and earthquakes, drought and bushfire
Discipline-based Learning - English -
Reading - Progression Point 3.75 -
interpretations of and responses to a wide range of print and multimodal texts





Activities:
Interactive Whiteboard - ActiveInspire - http://www.prometheanworld.com/server.php?show=nav.16874

RSS Feeds - ScienceDaily: Natural Disasters - http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/earth_climate/natural_disasters/
Global Disaster Alert and Coordination - http://www.gdacs.org/ - continued use within the Explore stages due containing topic specific RSS Feeds

Google Earth - Image obtained from: http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID25803/images/2010-04-06_170358.jpg
Google Earth software - http://www.google.com/earth/index.html - Chosen due to the increased frequency of availability of this program within schools.