Assistant Principals' Report

Hello and welcome to our newsletter item for this week.

Welcome back to Term 4!

Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM 2.0)

As previously shared through newsletters, Heidelberg Primary School have been implementing the updated Victorian Teaching and Learning Model, VTLM 2.0 over the last couple of years.

The instructional strategy we are focussing on for this term is, Opportunities to Respond (OTR). An opportunity to respond is implemented and designed by the teacher to prompt a student response, whether verbal, written or gestural. 

Types and examples of OTRs include:

• choral response (my turn, your turn)
• pair share/think pair share
• choral reading
• mini whiteboards
• gesture responses
• prompts to perform an action 
• call on volunteers and non-volunteers to respond to prompts, questions or statements

OTRs are an evidence based teaching strategy that helps to engage learners, promotes high expectations for student to participate and contribute, supports on-task behaviour,  allows immediate practice after explicit modelling and is an opportunity to assess student learning and provide timely feedback, support and challenge to all learners in the classroom.

OTRs allow teachers to: 

• harness student attention 
• increase student engagement
• provide frequent opportunities to check for student understanding
• increase delivery pace of lesson plan

To improve together over the course of this term we are, 

• Collaborating with our Community of Practice (CoP) with Diamond Creek Primary School and Bundoora Primary School, including school visits 
• Observing and participating in classroom demonstrations across the school
• Professional readings, discussions and learning
• Learning walks from F-6
• Opportunities to reflect and monitor impact 
• Providing feedback to one another to improve collectively

We look forward to continued work together this term.

Warm Regards,

Helen Thomas & Monique Rankin

Assistant Principals

Heidelberg Primary School