From the Principal
Some of you may have noticed that some mornings another staff member is covering your child’s class due to the class teacher attending a meeting. This is part of our new system for structured collaborative planning sessions.
There is a great deal of educational research relating to effectiveness on student achievement through structured professional collaboration. The late Richard Dufour who was a leading educational practitioner and researcher, and his colleagues found that … ‘in order to ensure all students learn at high levels, educators must work collaboratively and take collective responsibility for the success of each student”.
When we consider that the fundamental purpose of schools is to ensure that all students are having access to a high quality education where they are able to learn at high levels, we can see that professional and purposeful collaboration between teachers is essential.
We now have three layers of collaborative planning sessions which currently comprise of like grade teacher teams, and also include either a literacy support teacher and/or a senior leadership staff member……
- Planning for whole class and differentiated group / individual needs for Reading. During these sessions teachers analyse student work to determine “where they are in their learning’ and ‘where they need to go next. They also discuss their whole class reading learning to ensure there is consistency across classes.
- Every three weeks each grade level team also has a two hour Inquiry Planning session to determine the learning focus and intentioned outcomes of the current Inquiry Learning Sequence. During this time the connections to the students’ literacy and numeracy learning are also determined.
- Most weeks teams also have one after-school Inquiry Planning session to organise the sequence of learning that will happen throughout the given Inquiry, including the connected literacy and numeracy learning that needs to occur for students to be successful with gaining understanding.
During each of these sessions teachers are having the opportunity to engage in professional conversations about current research-based teaching and learning methods, and which strategies may work best for the determined outcomes and particular students.
We are in the early stages of this new way of looking at collaborative practices, however, from the very beginning teachers have been highly engaged and focussed on ensuring that this time is contributing greatly to the success of each of our students.
Please talk with class teachers or any of the senior leadership team if you would like to know more about this.
Choir performance at the opening of Riverbend Park.
What an absolute pleasure it was to attend the performance from our 3/4 choir on Saturday morning. This was the choirs first public performance so the nerves for many students where incredibly high….not that it was noticeable throughout their wonderful performance. Thank you very much to all parents who were able to support this, and a big thank you to Mr Lamb for your preparation with the choir to make this happen!
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Karen