What's on in Primary under Instructional Leadership?

In 2017, Guyra Central School was identified as an Early Action for Success (EAfS) school. This meant we were allocated an Instructional Leader – Mrs Jenny Atkin and are at the forefront of learning and piloting new initiatives. Due to this teachers are undergoing professional learning to implement the new Literacy and Numeracy Learning Progressions. Only EAfS schools are undertaking this in 2018. The learning progressions are a teaching and learning resource. They describe common pathways of literacy and numeracy development from Kindergarten to Year 10 and can be used to determine what students already know, and what they need to learn next.

The learning progressions have been developed to help identify student needs, and to support classroom planning and reporting. The learning progressions will:

●provide comprehensive information about literacy and numeracy development from K-10.

●identify knowledge, understanding and skills that can be demonstrated across all learning areas, not just English and Maths,

●allow teachers to locate a student's current knowledge and ability more accurately, to determine the learning that should follow.

What is the role of the Instructional Leader?

The role of the Instructional leader is to work directly with teachers to build student and teacher capacity in both literacy and numeracy. Instructional Leaders draw upon a strong understanding of, and high expertise in, quality teaching in literacy and numeracy across Kindergarten to Year 2 and beyond.

Instructional Leaders are responsible for developing and implementing effective practices to systematically collect, analyse, track and monitor student progress in order to support and enable quality teaching practices. Coordinating the identification of the literacy and numeracy achievement of all Kindergarten to Year 2 students and beyond is another aspect. This information is used to determine the professional learning needs of staff to support them in differentiating instruction and strategically planning appropriate targeted interventions in literacy and numeracy across Kindergarten to Year 2, extending into Year 3. There is a strong focus on evidence-based decision making. In the classroom, teachers map the progress of students against key aspects of the literacy and numeracy progressions to support decision making around the types of interventions needed by individual students.

The Instructional Leader leads the professional learning of teachers in effective literacy and numeracy teaching practices, strengthening teacher capacity and teaching expertise. They support teachers in developing the skills to effectively use on-going assessment for learning strategies to personalise learning in literacy and numeracy using tiered intervention and instruction. Instructional Leaders work in the classroom with teachers and with the children for whom that teacher is responsible. By gathering feedback and data, they evaluate the effectiveness of the professional learning, mentoring and coaching that has been implemented.

K-2 teachers are continuing Language, Literacy and Learning training (L3). L3 is a research-based classroom intervention, targeting text reading and writing. It provides rich literacy experiences through systematic and explicit teaching. It complements the daily literacy program. Students receive explicit instruction in reading and writing strategies in small groups in a daily literacy lesson. Students then rotate to independent or group tasks. Teachers of L3 complete professional learning throughout a school year including workshops, demonstration lessons, supervised practice and on-the-job support.

K-6 teachers are implementing a new Word Study program, ‘Words Their Way’. There are 2 components that make up the words each student will study.

1. Students have completed a written spelling assessment. The results have been analysed and each student has words that are identified as point of need based on spelling patterns, alphabet and meaning.

2. Students have also completed an oral assessment of High frequency Words (HFW) and they will then select a few words based on which HFW they didn’t know how to spell.

The students will be involved in daily word study lessons which will be completed with either the teacher, a buddy or individually. This will mean that students will no longer have large spelling lists but small individualised groups of words to work with and a variety of different activities for homework. Parents are encouraged to ask the students about their words, word meaning and patterns.

Number Sense is a strong focus within the K-6 Mathematics program. Students are undertaking number sense activities daily and being asked to demonstrate how they reached their answer. Number sense forms the foundation of all mathematical work. It refers to a person’s understanding of number concepts, operations, and applications of numbers and operations. It includes the ability and inclination to use this understanding in flexible ways to make mathematical judgements and to develop useful strategies for handling numbers and operations. Talking about and exploring numbers, numerical relations, symbolic and non-symbolic representations and patterns all help build strong foundations and connections. Number sense upholds Mathematics as a sense-making endeavour and reveals the flexibility inherent within numbers and mathematical thinking.

Successful mathematics users have an approach to Maths, as well as mathematical understanding that sets them apart from less successful users. They approach maths with the desire to understand it and to think about it, and with the confidence to make sense of it. Number sense is developed through discussing, debating and analysing various experiences over extended periods of time. It involves knowing, describing, using and generalising.

Jenny Atkin

Deputy Principal Instructional Leader