Excellence in Teaching and Learning 

Emmaleen Oakley

Assistant Principal

TERM 3 Remote and Flexible Learning

As Melbourne heads into Stage 4 restrictions due to Covid-19 it is a challenging time for educators and parents. We return to Remote and Flexible Learning for the second time after having established regular routines for our children and students after the last learning from home period and the school holidays. The feeling that as parents we have to try to be a teacher during this time is a lot of pressure, and can seem overwhelming. We don't want our children to fall behind in their education, we want to maintain routine and structure, but there are the competing demands of our lives outside of our child and their learning. 

During this period of remote and flexible learning we have considered feedback from parents, students and teachers and are aiming to provide a remote curriculum that enables parents and students to balance education needs with the other demands.

Curriculum

The teachers will be providing a schedule of one Literacy Activity, one Numeracy Activity and one 'other' activity from Art, PE, Humanities etc, per day. In between each of these activities we encourage you to have movement breaks with your child and allow them to have down time also. 

Teacher availability

Some of the classroom teachers will be on site supervising students who have met the conditions for on site supervision. This might be one or two days a week for teachers and up to three days for teacher aides. During on site duty Teachers/Aides will not be contactable through email or See Saw. However you will still be able to contact your relevant sub school leader on this day through email. You will be notified if you are one of these families that are impacted by this. 

Curriculum Day Focus - Professional Learning for Teachers

Steph Di Salvo, our Leading Teacher & Teaching and Learning Coach will be running a Professional Learning Session on Using ABLES & Guttman Charts to improve teaching and assessment.

ABLES is the diagnostic tool we use at JSA to help us understand what our students already know. The data assesses student skills in reading and viewing. Guttman charts are e-tools that group students on the basis of demonstrated skills. They help teachers to organise data from objective or judgement based assessment tasks and sort the data into a visual analysis chart. These charts show student skills at a general and item level sorted from least difficult to most difficult, and help teachers to find the student's Zone of Proximal Development or ZPD. Knowing the ZPD can assist teachers to plan teaching sequences that help students develop the next skills in the sequence, without 

re-teaching a student content they already know, or teaching well outside a student's capabilities. 

Teaching within the student's ZPD is important for engagement and academic progress. When teachers deliver a lesson that is too difficult or too easy then students can disengage from their learning. Developing teacher understanding of using assessment data to inform teaching and learning, is an important part of ensuring every child is able to meet their full potential as learners. Additionally using Guttman charts helps teachers set high, but realistic expectations for students and their academic achievements.