DNG+-+Thoughts+and+Ideas

As a technology (electronics) teacher, it is quite a challenge for me to be starting out teaching for the first time in this field, especially something that isn't quite exactly your own field. Besides one other experienced electronics teacher in the school, there wasn't a lot of other resources which I could get hold of for a start and we do not use any technology textbooks that I could reference from. My basic question is - how do I find out what level of knowledge do you impart to the different year levels of students? How do I know what should a Year 8 or Year 9 student should know about the subject? Because I had been a support teacher in some classes to observe how it was conducted, that was basically my starting point I took.

[|www.technologystudent.com]- I found about this wonderful website which has an excellent host of resources for Design and Technology teachers and students. Contains a range of information from electronics, CNC, Computer Control, Design Process, Health and Safety and many more. I was able to use their topic outline to guide my lesson plans and also use some of the readily available pdf exercises to set out some written tasks for my students.

**__EPS: Sounds like they are very interesting sites. Was there anything in particular IE a lesson, etc you were able to teach while using this site?__**
DNG- There were some lessons which I were able to somewhat leverage from their resources. We have a double period (80mins) for each classrun and i've mainly outlined to introduce a different component (eg. resistor, battery, LED, capacitor, transistor etc) each week with half the lesson on theory and second half on pracs. The theories are a combination of directed instruction or video-led programs from other resources. Sometimes, I use the worksheets which I've taken straight-off from the technologystudent site and used it as an assessment tool. But I realised that you might not be covering some of the contents in their worksheet, so u'll need to tweak the worksheets according to your lesson plan which I find myself doing more in my 2nd run of the subject to suit my learning outcomes. In particular, the **__Battery and LED__** topic was a good one to use but I've since incorporated a few more assessment questions.

[|www.tes.co.uk]- This is a leading UK-based job website for teachers and educational professionals. On it, there is a Resource section where you can goto for a variety of design and technology topics and resources from lesson plans, worksheets, posters, powerpoint presentations, teaching ideas and much more from home-grown teachers who willingly contribute and share their knowledge to the community. All resources are free to download as long as you have a TES account. What I also like about this website is that the resources are categorised to the sutdent year levels which I've found more helpful than technologystudent.com. Although the website is made for the UK educational system, it didn't take me long to figure out the matching standards: KS3- equivalent to Y7-Y9; KS4- equivalent to Y10-Y11; Post-16- equivalent to VCE year onwards.