Tutorial 8 : Focusing on Individuals
Introduction
Teachers need to know all their pupils well so that they can give them the attention and support
that they need. When considering children as learners, there are several factors that one needs to
keep in mind. Children have their likes and dislikes; their strengths and weaknesses; their good and
bad moods; different learning difficulties, social skills, and language competences. Apart from their
different personalities, children also bring with them diverse cultures and knowledge as a result of
their home background, their upbringing and their friends. Teachers face the challenge of learning
such details about each and every child to then be able to devise strategies for each within a
classroom setting. This is essentially what makes teaching demanding.
Aims and objectives
This tutorial focuses on how teachers observe and assess their students in order to see how best to
cater for their individual educational needs. Teachers note both the academic development such as
language and mathematical competences, as well as the pupils’ social and emotional development.
By the end of the tutorial sessions you should:
•
Gain insights about a number of pupils in your classroom;
•
Know how to draw up a child’s profile by referring to crucial sources of information on their
mathematical, language skills, and social and emotional development;
•
Use precise and unambiguous terminology to describe children’s achievements, set targets
to be achieved and report your strategies for improvement;
•
Be aware of ethical issues and the Data Protection Act with respect to what information and
comments can be made about one’s pupils in the classroom.
Issues to consider and discuss
1. What do you think that a teacher needs to learn about children as learners? Why?
2. In what ways do you think that a teacher learns about his/her children’s language and
mathematical skills as well as with respect to their social and emotional development?
3. How can this information be used meaningfully to help teachers provide individual attention to
pupils?
2. What ethical issues would you take into consideration when drawing up reports or looking up
information about individual children?
Ways of finding out about children
Teachers use various methods to learn about their pupils’ learning needs. One main way of learning
about their pupils is through observations. Teachers observe children while they are participating in
the lesson, doing their classwork, as well as while they are interacting with their friends. Through
observation, teachers learn what difficulties individual children encounter when doing mathematics,
whether they can speak English and Maltese well, how confident they feel in each language, and
other details. This information is very important for teachers as it helps them identify how to provide
support to the children so that they can learn better.
Students on teaching practice are asked to develop pupil profiles. This is an exercise which helps you
develop the observation skills necessary for learning about individual pupils and how best to help
them learn and develop further.
What should a pupil profile look like?
Once you identify a pupil for your profile, you need to observe the child for a morning and to note
aspects related to their mathematical skills, their competences in Maltese and English, as well as
their social and emotional well-being. These initial observations are described in the first section of
the pupil’s profile. It is important to note that due to the Data Protection Act1 and ethical
considerations, you need to be careful not to include the pupil’s name on your document. Other
names which hide the identity of the child are to be used. From an ethical perspective, it is also
important to retrict comments to learning aspects. Comments about the children’s parents’ social
background and other personal problems should not to be included. It is important to note that the
teacher’s role is one of promoting learning and thus any form of predjudice or judgemental
comments have no place in pupil profiles. The first section of the profile is then thus to include only
information about the child’s strenths and weaknesses with respect to learning issues.
The second section of the pupil profile is to include the comments which you will need to include
periodically during your teaching practice. The template to be used is provided overleaf. This
template is divided into four columns. The first colimn is for the date of entry of the comment. This
is important as from it you can trace the pupil’s development. The second column includes the
observation of the child’s difficulty or weakness while the third column includes the target which you
set for the child. Some teachers set targets for each of the mathematical, language and social skills,
but one can also focus on only one of two of these at one time. The last column then describes the
strategy that you as a teacher aim to use in order to help the child achieve the target set.
During teaching practice entries for each profile should be more often than once a week, and which
show how you are following and supporting the child’s progress.
The template for the pupil’s profile is given overleaf.
1
The full documentation concerning the data protection act is available at
http://docs.justice.gov.mt/lom/legislation/english/leg/vol_13/chapt440.pdf
Student:
_____________________________________
Mathematical skills:
Language Skills (Maltese and English):
Social and emotional skills:
Date
Observation
Target
Strategy
Observation Tasks:
1) When you are on your school experience observation, you are to choose three children in order
to draw up their pupil profile. Try to find three different types of students: both genders;
different characters - naughty, lively to quiet; as well as different levels of achievement from
weak, average to high. If you choose diverse types of children for your pupil profiles you will be
able to develop observation and assessment skills which enable you to learn to know all the
different characters in your classroom.
2) Once you have chosen the three children, take time to focus your observation on these children
so that you will be able to draw up the first part of the pupil profile. This is to be drawn up for
each of the three children by the end of this tutorial session.
3) Based on a main observation try and set targets for at least one aspect on which you will try
towork on during your schools experience observations.
4) Continue making observations and setting targets for the rest of your school experience.