Teaching and Learning

As we wrap up the year I am taking a little time to reflect on the amazing successes we have had in Teaching and Learning at Concord School in 2017. Throughout the year we have really increased our focus on ensuring that we can support all of our students and provide the rigorous education that assists our students as they strive to ‘be the best they can be’. The following is a brief reflection and celebration of the work we have done in 2017.

Tech School Mini-Maker Faire

On Friday the 8th of December several students from our Secondary 9-10 section were able to support the Banyule Nillumbik Tech School with the Mini-Maker Faire. Our students ran STEAM programs for around 400 Primary aged students from various networks. Both Sam Birrell and I were able to catch up with students from our various old schools and it was a terrific opportunity for our students to really promote and develop their skills in communicating, science, technology, mathematics and the overall self-worth and positivity that comes from sharing your knowledge with others. Our continued work with the Tech School really supports our students to explore opportunities for student driven and independent work. Sam has already had many students putting their hand up to take part in these opportunities next year and we look forward to the continued partnership.

Pre-CAL Program

As you have read throughout the year we are very proud of the work that has been done in our Pre-CAL program in 2017 and the newsletter today gives me an opportunity to celebrate our growth in this area. 2017 has been the year to really support students and differentiate content using the Pre-CAL program as a vehicle. All of our students require us to make adaptations so that they can access the Victorian Curriculum. Our Pre-CAL teachers and support staff have worked extremely hard to ensure that all students can approach the challenges of learning with successful outcomes. We are still learning and the program grows as we as teachers learn more about our students but we have had an extremely successful venture into this alternative learning model in 2017 and look forward to continuing with it next year. A big thankyou to all the staff that have been involved and spent many hours ensuring that the program meets the needs of all the students involved.

Professional Learning Communities

2017 has also been the year where our Teaching and Learning focus has been based around a Professional Learning Communities (PLC) Model. Our PLC’s have operated in all classrooms from Prep to Year 10 and have given our teachers the opportunity to collaborate to explore strategies that support students to reach learning outcomes. The teachers have worked really hard to give students every opportunity to achieve and I will take this opportunity to thank them for their professionalism and work ethic. As the PLC is a system wide project all schools that have undertaken this project have had their practices audited by an external body. I witnessed the auditors question our staff around workload and the response gave me tingles. The teacher said that yes it does take a lot of work to assess the students, then work with others to unpack the assessment and then to develop an intervention for an individual student. She said that sometimes this means working through your lunch break together because it is the only time you have available but she did not mind because this work gives our students what they need and she can see how successful it is.

This is just one example of why the successes in Teaching and Learning have been so great because our staff are here to support our students and they are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that students are supported to achieve. I could not be more proud of the work we have done in 2017 as our students are excelling and feeling successful in their personal learning journey.  

Kirrily Lamers,

Assistant Principal