High Impact Teaching (HIT) Strategies

In Term 2 I wrote about how we are developing a professional growth culture for our staff here at Shelford. Our teachers are currently meeting fortnightly in collaborative groups to use reflective practice to diagnose a need within their own classroom and then develop a SMART goal that will guide them in implementing strategies to improve their pedagogical practise.

Digging deep

In diagnosing their need teachers have been asked to ‘dig deeply’ so they are able to look beyond the symptoms of a problem. Digging deep enables our teachers to look at what has caused the symptoms and lastly to ask themselves why these causes have appeared. In doing so they are able to truly get to what is the root of the problem or need. This process enables staff to use and be mindfully aware of their own reflective skills, while at the same time being able to lean on their experienced colleagues for help or to develop their own coaching skills within a collaborative environment.

HIT Strategies

In developing their individual SMART goals our teachers will select one HIT strategy to help them to attain their goal and improve their pedagogical practise. So, what are the HIT strategies and why do we think they are an important part of improving teacher practice?

‘The HITS are 10 instructional practices that reliably increase student learning wherever they are applied. They emerge from the findings of tens of thousands of studies of what has worked in classrooms across Australia and the world. International experts such as John Hattie and Robert Marzano have synthesised these studies and ranked hundreds of teaching strategies by the contribution they make to student learning. The HITS sit at the top of these rankings.’

(DET, 2017)*

The 10 HIT strategies are:

HIT strategy	Description
1. Setting goals	Setting and communicating clear lesson goals to help students understand the success criteria, commit to the learning, and provide the appropriate mix of success and challenge.
2. Structuring lessons	Planning and delivering structured lessons which incorporate a series of clear steps and transitions between them, and scaffold learning to build students’ knowledge and skills.
3. Explicit teaching	Using explicit teaching to provide instruction, demonstrate concepts and build student knowledge and skills. In explicit teaching practice, teachers show students what to do and how to do it, and create opportunities in lessons for students to demonstrate understanding and apply the learning.
4. Worked examples	Using worked examples to reduce student cognitive load, enabling them to focus on understanding a process which leads to an answer, not the answer itself.
5. Collaborative learning	Providing opportunities for students to participate in flexible groups that collaborate on meaningful tasks, and respond to questions that support achievement of learning goals.
6. Multiple exposures	Providing students with multiple opportunities to encounter, engage with, and elaborate on new knowledge and skills. It is not simple repetition or drill work.
7. Questioning	Regularly using questioning as an interactive means to engage and challenge students, and use it as a tool to check student understanding and evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching.
8. Feedback	Using two-way feedback to gather information about a students’ understanding, to assist students to advance their own learning, and to verify the impact of their own practice.
9. Metacognitive strategies	Using metacognitive strategies to help students develop awareness of their own learning, to self-regulate, and to drive and sustain their motivation to learn.
10. Differentiated strategies	Using evidence of student learning readiness, learning progress, and knowledge of individual student learning profiles, to make adjustments for individuals so all students experience challenge, success and improved learning.

Our teachers will use their own professional judgement to choose a HIT strategy, as they are the ones who know their students and how they learn best.

Karen Whelan

Deputy Principal, Staff and Operations

* (DET (2017). High Impact Teaching Strategies: Excellence in teaching & learning.

https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/practice/improve/Pages/hits.aspx

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