Pedagogy & Literacy

Leader of Pedagogy (LOP) - Genevieve Vickers 

“Pedagogy” refers to the study of teaching approaches and how they affect learners. The core task of the LOP is to build the capacity of teachers and improve pedagogy in order to improve student outcomes. This is achieved in a number of ways such as supporting teachers in coaching, “impact cycles”, facilitating Professional Learning Teams (PLTs), using data to assess the impact and implementing school-wide initiatives based on evidence-based practices. These evidence-based practices are what we call, “high impact teaching strategies”, which have been well-researched to have the best impact on student learning. 

This term I am looking forward to working on a few initiatives:

I will be working in a Year 8 classroom where we have a cross-curricular collaborative learning focus. Geography and Science teachers have teamed up to focus on students’ skills and content development that are common across both subjects. The literacy coach and I are working with these teachers to maximise impact. 

We also have cross-curricular Professional Learning Team (PLT) meetings where teachers from different faculty areas form a team to support each other and work in a cycle of “Collaborative Inquiry”. This involves teams examining a learning need in their classroom, researching and implementing high-impact strategies, receiving and applying feedback and evaluating the impact on student learning before identifying the next stage in their cycle of professional learning.

In addition, I will be working with HSC teachers to analyse their HSC results from 2021. This will allow them to identify strengths and areas for improvement through the use of data and will assist faculties to backward map the skills most needed in the junior years. 

Literacy coach- Kate Walshe 

The role of the literacy coach at St Mary’s is to develop a sustainable literacy culture within the school. As the literacy coach, I work collaboratively with staff to embed Literacy within their curriculum, as research shows that, ‘All teachers are responsible for facilitating students’ literacy learning – not just teachers of subject English’ (Wing Jan and Taylor, 2020).

The role of the literacy coach creates opportunities for staff to participate in modeled, guided, shared and independent practice focusing explicitly on literacy within their curriculum. This school-wide approach aims to improve student access to the curriculum and ultimately improves life opportunities as in almost every type of coursework or career, people have to inform, explain, and provide their reasoning in writing.

Within classes across the school,  students will be focussing on academic vocabulary, explicit instruction of sentence structure and be provided with regular opportunities to write about what they are learning with quality feedback. I look forward to sharing staff and students' literacy work throughout the year.