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=My subject content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge together with my understanding of how to teach a range of students has developed. =

As a teacher of Science the accuracy and currency of my subject content knowledge has always been of great importance. To that end I have maintained membership of the Science Teacher’s Association of NSW [STANSW] and regularly attended [|conferences] and workshops. I started marking [|HSC] Biology in 2007 and became a Pilot Marker in 2010. The HSC marking process provides an excellent opportunity for professional development and in 2010 I started presenting Biology at STANSW [|Meet the Markers] Conferences to share the knowledge gained with colleagues across the State. I have also been a regular [|ESSA] marker for several years. Training in the use of the SOLO Taxonomy in marking emphasised my awareness of the stages in concept development. This has had a marked effect on the way in which I structure my teaching to facilitate this concept building.

Since 2008 I have been [|presenting] both content based and pedagogy based workshops at different conferences to exhibit, share and advise colleagues on how to implement different pedagogical models and ICT skills to engage students in their learning of Science.

For the past few years I have had a number of articles {e.g. [|Animating Science], [|Accessing the Power] and [|Kitchen Chemitry]} published in Science Education News [SEN], the STANSW quarterly journal to share with and inform colleagues about different skills and pedagogies while encouraging professional discourse.

All schools have a range of students with specific needs. My current school (I have been here for 8 years) has 2 major groups that have specific needs. We have a significant number of boarding students from various places in Asia and a successful bursary program for indigenous students. To that end I have sought advice and researched ways to design and implement activities that will help these students engage with and understand Science {[|ESL] notes, Embedding [|Indigenous Science]}.

The pedagogical structures that one uses must enable students to work at their own pace and recognise when they have achieved an outcome. For a number of years I collaborated with others to produce self paced learning units of work e.g. [|A Space Odyssey] a year 8 unit on Astronomy. In 2011 I devised a self-paced learning package, [|Origins] a year 10 unit on Evolution. I chose the Microsoft program OneNote to deliver this package to each student as I could embed a wide range of rich media resources within the package. The student feedback was that they enjoyed the variety of media especially video and felt that they could learn better as they could pause, stop and rewind when there was something that they did not quite understand.

In further research I came across Salman Khan presenting "Let's use video to reinvent education" to a TED conference. He described how he had set up a number of videos on YouTube as coaching help for his nephews. This grew into the Khan Academy. I was led on a research journey which resulted in my current interest in the ‘flipped classroom’. [|annotated Flip Articles]

I have now flipped my classroom in a number of my classes. [|My Experience of the Flipped Classroom] I do not use it for every class and every topic but I find it has transformed the way I look at teaching and student work. I also find that differentiation happens naturally because of the range of resources I provide, and the fact that, in class, I am free to help students individually, because I am no longer delivering the content.