Learning Specialist News

Professional Learning Communities - Active Engagement 

“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” Paul Coelho 

At South Melbourne Park Primary School, we are continuously looking for ways that we can improve. As a reflective community, we identify our areas of strength and set goals to help us advance and progress. One of the ways teachers reflect and improve on their practice is by working as a team in their Professional Learning Community (PLC), implementing the Improvement Cycle. This term, as connected to our Annual Implementation Plan, teachers have worked on the goal of increasing students’ active engagement. This also links closely with the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model 2.0, where Attention, Focus and Regulation and Enabling Learning are key components. 

As part of our whole school learning in Term 1, teachers deepened their understanding of how students learn by unpacking cognitive load theory and the role attention and focus plays in learning and retaining new information. Teachers investigated Opportunities to Respond (OTRs), which allowed students to be more actively engaged during whole class learning. This has helped strengthen the teaching practices already in place and allowed teachers to think about more ways learners can be involved. OTRs also allow teachers to Check for Understanding as they are teaching. 

In Term 2, PLC Teams collected data on students engagement levels in their classroom and set goals. They then used the knowledge they had learnt to plan for OTRs in their classroom. Across the school teachers either focused on the use of mini-whiteboards or Pair-Shares. Throughout the Improvement Cycle, teams have implemented and monitored these strategies, allowing them to refine their practice. Teachers have referred back to cognitive load theory and thought carefully about how to structure their teaching to embed OTRs after each new chunk of information. They have planned their questions carefully, to allow students to define information in their own words, explain examples and non-examples and compare and contrast information. By improving the quality of questioning, teachers are more clearly able to see that students understand the information being presented to them. 

As part of the Improvement Cycle, teachers observed each other teaching and used the feedback to plan their next steps. As we near the end of the cycle, teachers will monitor their own classrooms once more and teams will present their findings. The end of the cycle celebrates the growth students have made in their learning and provides an opportunity for teachers to reflect on the impact of their teaching. Teachers will identify key takeaways that they plan to continue to embed in their practice and lessons learnt to improve future cycles. By sharing this knowledge across South Melbourne Park Primary School, we are able to learn from each other and support each other on our journey of continuous improvement.