From the Head of Teaching and Learning

At Pittwater House we are committed to ensuring all five tenets of our learning model, that encapsulate our ‘School for HEROIC Learners’, are authentically on display every day. Our commitment to a balanced education for our students requires the pursuit of academic excellence to be tempered with ‘Well-Rounded Opportunities’ where students are empowered to be their best selves academically, socio-emotionally and physically. For us as teachers, this commitment to our students is underpinned and supported by our own professional pursuit for ‘Excellence in Teaching and Learning’. So, for something a little different, in this edition, I’d like to share what the teachers have been up to lately in their learning.

As part of our commitment to our school wide goals for 2024, a group of HEROIC champions (my generous colleagues) have joined me recently to ‘walk’ the school, measuring and pulse-checking our Deep Learning Pedagogy, our explicit Literacy and Numeracy Strategies and our students’ engagement levels from K-12. 

What are Learning Walks?

A group of teachers visiting multiple classrooms at their own school, with the aim of fostering conversation about teaching and learning to develop a shared vision of high-quality teaching that impacts on student learning. 

Why Learning Walks?

• Learning Walks increase teachers’ awareness of practices occurring within their school
• builds whole-school sense of accountability for quality of teaching and learning 
• encourages improvement through openness and sharing of practice
• supports teachers to implement effective practices observed in other classrooms
• may help address differences between classes within a school

Intent upon this way forward for us at Pittwater House, a fortnight ago, a group of colleagues joined me in three teams, to become known as the ‘HEROIC Walkers’. We spent two days visiting classrooms from K-12, in our non-teaching periods observing the learning at Pittwater House through the lens of our students. I acknowledge and thank this team; Mr Glenn Stephenson, Mr Adam Demasi, Mrs Amy Tickle, Mrs Abby Jeffery, Mrs Jane Richardson, Mr Darren Smith, Mrs Charmaine Leman, Mrs Belinda Treloar and Mr Richard Upton for their willingness to be a part of this highly impactful professional learning. 

What We Observed 

Consensually, as a team we observed high levels of student engagement in every classroom we visited and our commitment to explicit literacy strategies was highly evidenced by the visuals on classroom walls and smart boards, and the scaffolds in student workbooks and on their laptop devices. 

Particularly we were delighted to observe our HEROIC learners demonstrating…

Stage 3  

• Understanding of Tier 2 and 3 Words 
• Strong use of Vocabulary 
• Technical Language Use
• Vocabulary of Measurement  

Stage 4  

• Digital Literacy  
• Collaborative Research
• Poetry and Essay writing 
• ‘HEROIC Heights’ in classroom  

Stage 5 

• Active listening to explicit instruction
• Analytical Writing 
• Multimedia fluency 
• Reading widely

Stage 6 

• Students being required to ‘think deeper’.  
• Mastery of essay structure 
• Building on teacher feedback 
• Understanding through differentiation 

Where to Next? 

Next term the plan is to broaden the team of ‘Walkers’ to include a wider group of teaching staff and Curriculum Leaders to continue to observe explicit teaching and learning strategies that are targeting growth in our students learning outcomes within our single gender and co-curricular classes and across the Junior and Senior School. We continue to prioritise the educational journey of a Pittwater House student who transitions in their learning from stage to stage; from Pre-K to Year 12 seamlessly, supported by the five tenets of our learning framework and encouraged by their committed teachers to connect their learning lesson by lesson, day by day, through a common language of learning and through a shared HEROIC understanding of what it means to realise full potential to learn whilst navigating a complex world.