Principal Team Editorial

As educators, our core work is learning and teaching and what happens in the classrooms.  At Wantirna College, our teaching and Education Support staff are committed to working together to ensure teaching, learning and wellbeing is the priority. 

Our teachers meet every Monday and Wednesday after school to improve teacher practice – we want our teachers to be the best they can possibly be. We know how powerful collaborative learning can be and therefore our teachers work in professional learning groups to support and challenge each other to improve and refine their practice by trialling evidence-based teaching strategies and reflecting on the impact they are having on student outcomes. 

Our focus this term is to dig deeper into how teachers can use Developmental Rubrics in the classroom to better understand where our learners are at. Teachers are using different strategies to check for understanding so they can respond to the learning needs of students both in the moment and minute to minute. For example, teachers might ask a multiple choice question for students to respond to on their mini whiteboards. If most of the class get the right answer, the teacher knows most of the class are ready to move ahead with their learning. If most get it wrong, the teacher knows to re-teach it in a different way. If it’s divided, half the class can move on, and the other half might engage in a mini lesson with further explicit teaching. These short and fast assessments are often fun and engaging for students, however they are carefully planned and thought out by the teacher to ensure what they are teaching is ‘sticking.’ Most importantly, if it isn’t ‘sticking’ and students aren’t demonstrating that they are learning what is being taught, teachers can be responsive and target their teaching accordingly. 

'we want our teachers to be the best they can possibly be'

Further to these fast formative assessments that guide the teaching and learning within the lesson, is the use of Developmental Rubrics. The rubrics are an important teaching and learning tool that act as a road map for the learning, giving students greater understanding of what they are learning and what the next steps are. For the past four years we have spent a huge amount of time creating learning continua and rubrics which have been fundamental in designing curriculum and assessment, however we need to continue embedding them in our classrooms as learning tools for students. We want our teachers to be using the rubrics in class to support students in self-assessing where they think they are at and we want teachers to be using them to capture the fast, formative assessments they are doing to provide valuable and timely feedback to students. 

Academic Review Conferences

For the last couple of years, we have been conducting Academic Review Conferences with our Year 11 and 12 students which have been highly successful. Last week, we trialled this model in place of our traditional Parent Teacher Interviews for all Year 7-12 students, with varying degrees of success. 

We are still working our way through feedback from staff, students and parents, however, overall, we were happy with the outstanding increase in student attendance from 28% at PTS interviews in Term 3 to 90% attendance at ARCs. 

Furthermore, we are confident that, shifting the conversation from teacher and parent/s talking about the student to the student leading the reflective conversation around learning and goal setting will have greater impact on student outcomes. We acknowledge however, we have work to do in refining and improving the model and ensuring the conversations are holistic and student led with meaningful insights into the growth and strengths of our students and opportunities for improvement. 

Parent's/Carers are invited to provide feedback about this week's Academic Reveiw Conferences HERE.

School Production

What a show!! It’s one of the best I have seen at Wantirna with a fantastic set, creative lighting, great energy, outstanding timing (the ensemble work was incredible), fabulous costumes, awesome singing and music – and the dancing was next level! We are lucky to have such a committed crew of production staff and students who dedicate their heart and soul into making our production what it is. 

Parent Forum

I’d love to meet with parents and carers at our upcoming forum on Tuesday 3rd of September, 6pm – 7.30pm, in the General Staffroom. Our focus will be on Buildings, Grounds and Facilities and we look forward to taking families on a tour of the new projects that are underway. 

Carrie Wallis

Principal