Teaching and Learning

Over the past few weeks, our leadership team has had the opportunity to visit classrooms across the school and observe the many ways our teachers are using Opportunities to Respond as part of their daily teaching practice. Opportunities to Respond, often referred to as OTRs, are the moments in a lesson where students are actively prompted to think, answer, share, show or respond to learning.

It has been fantastic to see the increased engagement across all year levels. Teachers have been using a range of strategies, such as mini whiteboards, partner talk, choral responses, hand signals, quick writes and targeted questioning, to ensure that all students are actively involved in the learning. These strategies help create classrooms where every student has a chance to participate, rather than only a few students responding.

We know that OTRs are important because they increase student engagement and help students stay focused on the learning. They also give teachers valuable formative feedback in the moment. By seeing or hearing student responses during the lesson, teachers can quickly identify what students understand, where misconceptions may be occurring, and what might need to be retaught or adjusted.

We are also excited to share that our school has recently been approved to work with a specialist from the Department of Education, who will support a team of teachers to continue developing this important work. This is a wonderful opportunity to build on the strong practice already happening across our classrooms and reflects how much we value strategies that support student engagement, participation and learning growth.

We look forward to continuing to strengthen this work across the school.