Learning & Teaching @ MFGSC

LEARNING & TEACHING @ MFGSC: NEWSLETTER DECEMBER 2018

YEAR 9 HUMANITIES 2019

Our Year 9 Humanities curriculum will be enhanced next year by an additional 2 periods in 2019. This means that our students will benefit from 5 periods a week of Humanities learning.

The Humanities team has revised the Year 9 Humanities curriculum and developed a more comprehensive and engaging curriculum that moves beyond a history and geography focus. Our Year 9 Humanities curriculum now includes a focus on civics and citizenship, a deeper focus on Australian history, different types of tourism and the ‘geographies of interconnection’. This includes:

Australia (1750 – 1850): including a focus on European settlement; colonialism; the development of the colonies and the impact of colonisation on indigenous Australians.
Worldviews and Geographies of Interconnection: Geographical skills; How people connect to place and space; What is the indigenous worldview?
Tourism: Different types of tourism – wilderness; ecotourism; recreational; historical and the impact of these different types of tourism on people and places
The Industrial Revolution: Why did it begin in Britain? Developments in agriculture and transport; Expansion of factories and mass production; The impact on men, women and children; Living conditions and working conditions; Social impact on working condition and democracy / women’s rights; Emergence of socialism and the trade unions
Australia (1750 – 1918): Gold rushes & impact of gold rushes; the emerging Australian identity; White Australia policy; Australia at the start of the 20th Century - Road to Federation and reasons for Federation and Australia becomes a nation; World War 1 (1914-1918) - Causes and outbreak; Australia’s entry into WW1; Gallipoli; What impact did WW1 have on Australians and women? The Conscription debate; ANZAC Day and the ANZAC legend
Civics and citizenship: Government, democracy and the citizen; Living in a democracy; Australia’s political system; Political parties; Elections; How do citizens participate in a modern democracy?
Australia’s legal system: What key principles underpin our legal system? Why do we need laws? How laws are made? Australia’s legal system; types of legal disputes; courts and their function and rights.

TRAINING STUDENTS AS LESSON OBSERVERS

Stages 1 and 2

The first stages of my Professional Learning Project involves ‘training’ a group of students as lesson observers. The first session with my ‘team’ – our 2018 Middle Years Captains – Sophie, Lizette and Kaitlyn - explored two questions:

What do ‘great’ / effective teachers do?
What are the characteristics of good lessons?

According to Sophie, Caitlyn and Lizette these are some of the features of a good lesson and what ‘great’ and ‘effective’ teachers do.

This is the list of foci (the characteristics of good lessons) that the students came up with:

The team, with my support, then started developing each of those statements about the ‘characteristics of good lessons’ into something observable – that is the ‘evidence’ that you would they would observe in classrooms relating to those features. Sophie used the sentence starter ‘We would observe…’ and this helped the students to start to develop this list.

At our next training workshop the students and I will continue to determine the ‘observable evidence’ and then start our thinking about:

Lesson observation forms design
Lesson observation forms trial
A ‘code of conduct’ and the ethics relating to observation
Practice video observation and debrief
Lesson observation forms design
Practice feedback sessions

STUDENT FOCUS GROUPS: 2018 ATTITUDES TO SCHOOL SURVEY

At a Staff Meeting recently we unpacked our students’ Attitudes to School Survey data and the Focus Group responses (from our focus group sessions with 30 randomly selected students) with our staff. We took them through our analysis, the questions we created to ask the students and the data that prompted those questions.

In groups of 3, our teachers discussed ‘What feedback did the students give that I already do well as a teacher?’ and then developed a personal aim – ‘What I’d like to change or do more of in my teaching is…?” They wrote this on a little yellow star and were encouraged to stick it somewhere as a visual cue/reminder. My star is below:

IMPORTANT END OF YEAR DATES

The year is coming to an end – here are some end of year dates for your diary:

Mr Damien Toussaint

Assistant Principal (Learning and teaching)

Matthew Flinders Girls Secondary College