When applying for a WA Teaching Job, as well as needing to supply a resume or CV, you may be asked to write a cover letter, or statement addressing the domains that govern the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, in the context of the role and business needs of the school. This may need to be one, two, three, four or even five pages in length, depending on the role. This is actually a selection criteria application.
The AITSL Domains and Professional Standards for Teachers
Your statement (or cover letter) can be organised using the headings of the three AITSL Domains and seven Professional Standards for Teachers, as follows:
PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE
- Know students and how they learn
- Know the content and how to teach it
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
- Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
- Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments
- Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
PROFESSIONAL ENGAGEMENT
- Engage in professional learning
- Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community
Department of Education Teacher Cover Letter Example
Here’s an example for how to write part of your AITSL standards cover letter, for the Professional Practice Domain, which includes Standard 5: Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning.
Standard 5 includes the following focus areas (which are all addressed within the two examples below):
Focus area 5.1 Assess student learning
Focus area 5.2 Provide feedback to students on their learning
Focus area 5.3 Make consistent and comparable judgements
Focus area 5.4 Interpret student data
Focus area 5.5 Report on student achievement
“Professional Practice
[Note: your responses to Standards 3 and 4 would be expected to go in this section]
Standard 5: Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
Throughout my extensive teaching career, I have designed and implemented a range of assessment tasks for students, using both formative and summative assessment tasks. Using a range of assessments for individual learning activities ensures each student has an opportunity to demonstrate their acquired knowledge, since different students respond differently to various types of assessment. I have been able to use assessment data to adjust how I teach, and then provide feedback to both students and parents on student progress.
For example, as a Grade 1 Teacher at Example Primary School, I have completed the following:
Using English Content Descriptions and Achievement Standards from the Western Australian Curriculum and Assessment Outline, I designed an assessment to obtain information about student ability in reading and rewriting a favourite story. My colleagues and I designed a rubric to assess vocabulary, spelling, sentence control etc. We discussed several samples as a group to ensure we were marking assessments consistently. Once marking was complete, I ranked my class and used this information to identify learning progress and future needs with my colleagues. For example, we noticed several students were struggling with vocabulary. I was able to plan an intervention for these students, focusing on this area for the following semester. I was also able to use this information to report back to parents about their child’s progress.
I also conducted a lesson on understanding of time and phrases used to refer to the past, present and future, in accordance with Humanities and Social Sciences Content Description and Achievement Standards from the Western Australian Curriculum and Assessment Outline. After an initial class discussion on these terms, I divided the class into small groups, with each student in the group given one of three ‘time’ word cards e.g. ‘before, during, after’, ‘last week, just now, next week’ etc. Each student was required to group themselves into the correct order. I noticed several students struggled with this concept and provided additional feedback and explicit teaching to these students.”
You’ll note these examples utilise the SAO format (Situation, Action, Outcome):
Need help writing your WA Department of Education teacher cover letter, to ensure it addresses the AITSL Standards? Review our selection criteria packages. Our Perth resume writers can also assist with your resume.
