TEACHER REFLECTION FORM
OBJECTIVE 10
The task given to the students is to research the roles of the given workers in the
community by asking their parents or anyone with knowledge of the roles. It is divided
into 2 sets. The Set A used the terms which are familiar to the modern community,
while the Set B used terms that are familiar in the older or indigenous community.
For my classroom with a presence of Indigenous students, this type of assessment
promotes culture- sensitivity, fairness, inclusivity, contextualization and is very much,
with respect to how IP students must be assessed, appropriate.
This kind of assessment is very appropriate to my classroom which has Indigenous
students because it acknowledges the culture of these learners. According to an
article, Ways of teaching & engaging Aboriginal students in an effective classroom with
IP students must be culturally relevant and responsive. The assessment test reflects the
teacher’s knowledge and sensitivity to the culture of the IPs by including their own
culture and vocabulary in the assessment test. Further, the assessment also did not ask
the learners to use technology to find out the roles of these people in the
community but instead, the teacher asked them to utilize the community itself and
elders to provide the answers. This hits two birds; one, the teacher acknowledges that
not all students, specially IPs have computers or gadgets to search for the answers, this
is very much appropriate in teaching students from Indigenous Groups, second, it
involves community members which is a very strong strategy for teaching Indigenous
students (Korff, 2021). This kind of assessment also, respective of the culture and the
stronger presence of contextualization in our curriculum shows that the teacher did not
limit the IP learners to their own culture and vocabulary but also introduced the culture
and vocabulary of non-IP community and the same goes for the non-IP students in the
class.
The type of assessment given also develops students' HOTs or Higher Order Thinking
Skills in my class. According to various articles, in order for the students in the
Indigenous Group to thrive a teacher must set a high standard for them and expect
them to succeed. The assessment shows that the teacher expects everyone to explain
the roles they will gather and that is developing the reasoning ability and critical
thinking of not only the IP students but all of the students in class.
As a teacher, we sometimes forget that there are IP students who are in the mainstream
class who need a unique approach of teaching and assessment. This shows in many
research studies that tell us that the needs of these children are not being addressed.
However, there are revolutionary movements for Indigenous People especially in the
Basic Education. Our curriculum advocates inclusivity, fairness, and culture-sensitivity to
all students and to the groups they belong (DO 32, S. 2015, DO 72, s. 2009, DO 101, S.
2010).
The Assessment given as an example in this reflection form is one way of showing us
how to provide a proper and valid assessment test to all our students irrespective of
their community groups. It also shows how different the IP students may look at things
and concepts learned in school. For the IPs, the elders and community are very
fundamental to their existence and therefore, for the teaching instruction and
assessment to be successful for this type of learners, the tasks of the learners must
allow them to function in society and enable them to utilize their own culture and
environment.
To retrospect, we should always remember that assessment strategy must be in
consonance with the teaching strategy in order to really assess if the objectives based
on the competencies prescribed by our curriculum are being carried out in our lesson. In
order to address the learning needs of our students in Indigenous Groups we must make
all the parts of our lesson culture-sensitive, inclusive and conducive for them bearing in
mind that these students are the future of our country.