ASDAN Using Transport
5.3 Understand and participate in assessment moderation activities to support consistent and comparable judgments of student learning.
7.4 Participate in professional and community networks and forums to broaden knowledge and improve practice.
The Award Scheme Development and Accreditation Network (ASDAN) is an organisation that offers students a large range of professional courses, which have been specifically designed to advance education by providing opportunities for all learners, regardless of ability or socio-economic status. This year we completed the unit Towards Independence – Using Transport, with the aim to equip our students with the ability to as far as possible independently use our public transport system, empowering them to utilise this mode of transport in their working lives once they have left school. For some of our more significantly disadvantaged students, this presented the opportunity to interact with more of the world around them, with support.
In facilitating this course with another senior teacher, our classes worked collaboratively to complete this course. Students were taught to utilise a number of public transport options including walking safely to board buses, trains and ferries. Students were also educated on several transport related programs that could assist them in traveling, including a Department of Transport website Journey Planner, and a text number that would instantly give the next five arrival times of vehicles at a specific public transport stop.
Students were taught about traveling on public transport in stages, which included planning, preparing, catching and departing transport, exploring what to do if things went wrong and reflecting on our transport experiences. In a gradual release scaffold method, students were asked to utilise these skills through taking part in transport related excursions. These extremely fun events increased in complexity, and culminated in a student centred final excursion dubbed ‘The Amazing Challenge’. All round this team teaching method worked wonderfully with our students, and the excursions were the highlight of many students’ calendars. ASDAN courses include a progress log that focuses on what the student has achieved from a course and on setting new learning goals for the future, which we also completed with each student.
During the course of this work I attended a two day training course on implementing ASDAN modules, an ASDAN professional forum, and as a collaborative team we conducted internal moderation on our student portfolios. During the assessment process of our work, I was asked to become an external moderator of ASDAN portfolios from other education support schools, and attended a full day collaborating with many other education support teachers from other areas of the city.
Through all of these experiences, I was required to critically review my own and other teaching programs and the resulting student work produced from these teaching and learning activities. This provided me significant opportunity to collaborate with other professionals in my field, to input positively to community networks and substantially improve my practice.
7.4 Participate in professional and community networks and forums to broaden knowledge and improve practice.
The Award Scheme Development and Accreditation Network (ASDAN) is an organisation that offers students a large range of professional courses, which have been specifically designed to advance education by providing opportunities for all learners, regardless of ability or socio-economic status. This year we completed the unit Towards Independence – Using Transport, with the aim to equip our students with the ability to as far as possible independently use our public transport system, empowering them to utilise this mode of transport in their working lives once they have left school. For some of our more significantly disadvantaged students, this presented the opportunity to interact with more of the world around them, with support.
In facilitating this course with another senior teacher, our classes worked collaboratively to complete this course. Students were taught to utilise a number of public transport options including walking safely to board buses, trains and ferries. Students were also educated on several transport related programs that could assist them in traveling, including a Department of Transport website Journey Planner, and a text number that would instantly give the next five arrival times of vehicles at a specific public transport stop.
Students were taught about traveling on public transport in stages, which included planning, preparing, catching and departing transport, exploring what to do if things went wrong and reflecting on our transport experiences. In a gradual release scaffold method, students were asked to utilise these skills through taking part in transport related excursions. These extremely fun events increased in complexity, and culminated in a student centred final excursion dubbed ‘The Amazing Challenge’. All round this team teaching method worked wonderfully with our students, and the excursions were the highlight of many students’ calendars. ASDAN courses include a progress log that focuses on what the student has achieved from a course and on setting new learning goals for the future, which we also completed with each student.
During the course of this work I attended a two day training course on implementing ASDAN modules, an ASDAN professional forum, and as a collaborative team we conducted internal moderation on our student portfolios. During the assessment process of our work, I was asked to become an external moderator of ASDAN portfolios from other education support schools, and attended a full day collaborating with many other education support teachers from other areas of the city.
Through all of these experiences, I was required to critically review my own and other teaching programs and the resulting student work produced from these teaching and learning activities. This provided me significant opportunity to collaborate with other professionals in my field, to input positively to community networks and substantially improve my practice.