Curriculum, Assessment, Teaching & Learning 

Curriculum, Assessment & Teaching & Learning

Newsletter 9

Professional Learning

Earlier this term, Woodmans Hill one of its Professional Learning day. The day was predominately split into two parts; Teaching and Wellbeing.

The first part of the day was focused around the highly effective practice of Woodmans Hill staff. As a staff we were active participants in our Teaching Expertise/Strength Masterclass, where selected staff shared recordings of specific instruction strategies that they use to assist students with learning. These were:

• Low key interventions, such as cross praise and task praise

Low Key Interventions aim to determine the right strategy for a situation, from the least through to most intrusive. By mastering these and embedding them in your practice, we can create a context where we can devote our energies to the teaching and learning, as well as creating our capacity and headspace to address more extreme behaviours when they arise. 

• Deconstructing success criteria to assess understanding

Lessons need clear learning intentions with goals that clarify what success looks like. Effective learning Intentions explain what students need to understand or be able to do, with Success Criteria outlining what this looks like in practice. By setting challenging goals, the teacher develops and maintains a culture of high expectations and builds connections to prior learning. 

• Multiple exposures/spaced practice

Students need time to review material over a long period of time, giving their brains time and space to develop synaptic connections, and move new information from the short term to the long term. Multiple exposures provide students with multiple opportunities to encounter, engage with, and elaborate on new knowledge and skills. This is deliberate practice across multiple days and learning experiences, and using different activities to vary the interactions learners have with the new knowledge. It is important to consider the different learning styles of students. 

After this we moving into pairs/trios and reviewed recordings of each other’s practice to identify the context for the teaching expertise shown. We then reflected how it could be used effectively in our own classes.

Assessment

Assessment Feedback timelines for Year 10 for Semester 2 have been published on Compass. These timelines provide the weeks in which feedback will be released on Compass for each Learning Task.

Continuous reporting ensures students and parents get feedback throughout the semester, instead of the traditional end of term and semester reports. End of semester reports are still published, these collate the Learning Task feedback throughout the Semester, while displaying progress in relation to the Victorian Curriculum.

2023 Electives

Year 8 and 9 students have now had the opportunity to select their preferences for their 2023 electives. One of the positives in ensuring this is done in a timely manner is that students aware of their electives for the upcoming year before school booklists are later released, in the beginning of Term 4.

In the first weeks of Term 4 students will receive confirmation of their electives.

Accelerated Learning Program

Current Year 9 students have applied to be in the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) in Year 10 in 2023. The ALP offers students a chance to complete a VCE Unit 1/2 subject (Year 11 subject) in Year 10 and then Unit 3/4 (Year 12 subject) in Year 11.

This has the benefit of:

• Students experiencing the rigor of VCE before starting their complete VCE allocation.
• An extra percentage being incorporated into their ATAR.

A few applications are pending, but we have a range of Year 9 students who have already been accepted into this program. Well done!

Steve Sirrals