Magnify 

At Sacred Heart we know that the best curriculum in the world will not be impactful unless our classrooms are calm, ordered and safe. With the assistance of experts from Classroom Mastery, we continue to prioritise the development and implementation of our school-wide, evidence-informed Behaviour Curriculum. So far this year we have establish the Sacred Heart way of entering and exiting classrooms in a calm and predictable manner. Similarly, we use the same verbal cue to get students’ undivided attention (you may have heard “3, 2, 1, Sacred – HEART!”). These routines are designed to lessen the cognitive load of students and eradicate low level interruptions in the classroom that can cost learning up to 30mins out of every teaching hour. Our students have responded well to these routines and understand the need to prioritise learning time.

Moving forward we will focus on our Sacred Heart answering questions routine. Each classroom has a set of paddle pop sticks with students’ names on them. These sticks are used to select students to respond to questions or share their learning. Gone are the days where teachers ask students to raise their hands to answer a question. We know this method means that the same 3-4 students answer all the questions, whilst some students in the class can drop their focus and we lose engagement. Teachers will be ensuring that students understand the reason for our new answering questions routine, that it is not to catch students out, but rather to support them in their learning and engagement.