Teaching and Learning

Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching and Learning

Steve Sirrals

Assistant Principal: Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching and Learning

Welcome to the start of the 2024 school year. It’s an exciting time, encouraged by the fact that we continue to grow as a school, and having recently achieved such high performing results and pathway opportunities for our students in 2023.

Professional Learning

One of our collective Professional Learning focuses will be on how we move throughout our Learning Sequence as part of our Instructional Model (see below) at Woodmans Hill, in a responsive way.

It’s important for our students that we always spend time explain the ‘why’ of each stage of the learning sequence. Why are we learning this and where is the prior connection to past knowledge? Why does this applying our learning this way help us understand and build on our newly learnt knowledge?

Ultimately its about understanding the purpose for all stages of our learning sequence.

We do this by visually displaying the Learning Sequence, stating when we move through it and explaining why we are moving through it.

All this is supported by our continuous professional learning on Cognitive Science as a staff, that is, how our brain learns; what we do with knowledge, how its represented and how its retrieved.

Our deeper focus with this in Term 2 will be around how we continuously Check for Understanding during the lesson sequence. Doing this identifies gaps in students learning and allows us to be responsive to this.

Learning Walks

This year we will be continuing our Learning Walks. Learning Walks involve teams of staff visiting a range of classes to understand the learning trends and patterns within a school. This process offers a collection of benefits, mainly on staff gaining understanding of the learning practices across the school. Observing the range of learning needs in different classes, sharing best teaching practices and asking students to reflect on their learning allows us to review the impact of our work established within our 2024 school focus.

Continuous Reporting (learning Task Feedback)

A reminder that you can view student learning progress throughout the Semester on Compass, by viewing a students Learning Tasks. Learning Tasks are key assessments that are common across a Year Level in a subject.

NAPLAN Online

NAPLAN Testing will soon be taking place, with all NAPLAN tests online. 

NAPLAN Online provides a better assessment, more precise results and is more engaging for students. NAPLAN Online is a tailored test that adapts to student responses, presenting students with questions that may be more or less difficult – resulting in better assessment and more precise results. (nap.edu.au)

NAPLAN Testing begins on the 13th March.

Week 7 Timetable

Week 8 Timetable

For further guidance on NAPLAN, please visit https://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/faqs

Learning Walks

At Woodmans Hill a range of staff have been participating in Learning Walks. Our Learning walks are focusing on gathering data relating to; how well students understand what they are learning and why they are learning it, as well as their understanding of their current progress and how they can improve.

Each week we have been providing regular data from our Learning Walks to our staff, ensuring we have a consistent awareness and understanding of the feedback that the students are providing.