Learning and Teaching

Moving around the school this week it has been a joy to see the Wonder our young women and our Wonderful teachers are getting from just being able to learn and teach together.  The Wondrous feeling of seeing purpose and clarity in Learning has been our term 1 teaching focus. Yes, it is the year of wonder! We are even studying it in Year 11 English - it’s a novel by Geraldine Brooks.

This focus was instigated by the voice of students via survey data we received at the end of 2020  about their most wonderful learning experiences along with their least wonderful learning experiences. Across all year levels students indicated that having clarity and purpose was paramount to their learning.

As a teaching staff we have been teaching ourselves about using Learning Intentions and Success Criteria as one particular tool for teachers to use for all classes across all year levels. Teachers have always been aware that each lesson has a learning objective (intention), a rationale for teaching the knowledge or the skill (a purpose) and to a lesser degree, what it looks like when their students achieve a degree of understanding (success). But this semester, we are committing to specify the learning intention and the success criteria for every unit and every lesson across the school. For students, the learning intention in any class should be universally understood but the success in understanding will differ.

If students understand the teacher’s intention for the learning, and teachers understand the individual student’s level of understanding, then the learning becomes more visible. Students anecdotally report that this has, so far, been quite helpful.

As we enter a period of renewal at Killester, over the next five years, we have decided to undertake a detailed mapping of our entire curriculum. This semester, faculty leaders and their teams will examine their current curriculum focusing on content, knowledge, skills and pedagogy. The objective is to enable us to understand the entire curriculum, across and within faculties,  so that we are better able to make decisions about what we teach , how we teach and to whom is the content, knowledge and skills being delivered. With a more current (the last mapping was completed in 2016) overview and further deep exploration of our curriculum, we will be able to make more informed decisions to help our students learn more effectively and therefore achieve more purposeful and meaningful learning.

Steve McPhail

Teaching and Learning Leader

Reflection from VCE Student Jesse Coleman, Year 11 St Dorothy

The first week back at school was in all honesty, tiring. After a looong holiday and countless days of me staying up past the curfew my parents set for me, getting back into the rhythm of school was a big change for me, as well as a lot of other people I know. It was nice though, seeing my friends and all my teacher's happy faces! My favourite thing about starting VCE has to be the study periods we get. Honestly, I thought that going into these periods I would waste them away and do things that aren’t, well, studying. So, to think that I’ve actually been spending them wisely and getting on top of my stuff has made me feel super accomplished. I’m super excited for the rest of this year and can’t wait to see what 2021 brings to me!