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♪ Introductory Music ♪
The National Partnership Funding has been an absolute dream
for us. We very much absorbed the coach into our school
curriculum leadership team, and her input was very
important as we defined our strategic vision, and
from the vision obviously, we had action plans and
very clear roles and responsibilities.
If you look at coaching it's sort of a privilege really,
because it's the ultimate in professional development.
It's where you have a coach in a classroom, you
have that one to one interaction with a teacher
and you can be supporting them, listening to them,
observing, and then you're chatting about where
they can go next, where could they direct their
teaching to get the best results.
Working with Maureen is very non-threatening.
It's entirely confidential, and it is sometimes
difficult for teachers to have someone watching
them as they're teaching, but Maureen makes me feel
very comfortable and she's like my buddy that can
give positive feedback and constructive feedback as well.
The National Partnership Funding has allowed us to
provide teachers with a variety of reading comprehension
professional development, and we've also focused
on some spelling professional development for the teachers.
We've aimed our professional development at the
whole school, so Prep through to Year 7.
We've also included our teacher aides in all of our
professional development, along with our support staff.
So the school has a common language around reading
comprehension, and it allows our teacher aides to work
with the students using the same language as the teachers.
The coaches also introduced a big agenda on data.
We have data driven planning and we have data driven assessment.
Data, whereas once was a process that you did, it's
now becoming very informed and teachers are starting to
very much, enjoy their data and the purpose of collecting it.
At this school we do a lot of data analysis.
The whole year level cohort will come offline and discuss
with the Head of Curriculum the results of the Pat R test.
NAPLAN results - yes we do talk about, but because
it doesn't pertain to that particular year level
because the results don't come out until October,
we tend to test them at the start of the year
using a standardised test, which happens to be Pat R,
and we analyse and graph the results, and we
can then track where the children are most needy.
My top group for example, need more challenging
text and the middle group need more inference
skills. In fact, that's probably across the board with
this group - and then of course the lower group need
just decoding practice and the more basic skills there.
When you can look at a student's report and talk
about the effect size of improvement, it's very
much that student's data against that student, and
so the information is very personalised and
they're starting to benchmark their own goals, and
that has virtually come from the coaches looking
at data for the teachers and then for the students.
So the students are talking about their academic
journey and their gains, and being a student who
may have a lot of challenges based on a disability,
through to a very gifted child, they know where they
were and what their improvement is or should be. So the
attainments may be small, but the improvement is there.
I think yes, I have improved in reading, and in literacy - I'm
not sure about literacy. I'd say I'm pretty good at it. I think
I'm just going to have to wait until the NAPLAN comes out,
but yes, I'm hoping for good results and I'm confident.
And I think in my own personal experience, I've
become very much aware, particularly in reading
groups, of becoming more explicit and goal setting
in each group; working out really what I want to
get out of that lesson and what I want the
children to have achieved by the end of that lesson.
We normally go to turbo, which is a little group, and we
do reading to get our reading better and our language,
and hopefully when the NAPLAN results come back it
will be pretty good because I've been working on it.
You need a very, very explicit agenda.
You need a very strong team that has very defined
roles and responsibilities, and the coach has a
critical role in that team, and then once you have
a vision for the school and you have explicit
documents so people know exactly when, where, how
and why, you communicate that and then each person
takes responsibility to see that that happens.
If it is explicit, if it is accountable, people enjoy it.
I honestly was frightened of giving teachers such
an explicit agenda. I really thought I would confront
them, I would insult them. They love it. They absolutely
love to know what to do, when it's due by and the
purpose of it, and then from there comes the
luxury of enjoying the personalisation of pedagogy.
So my message is strong leadership team, strong
vision, explicit program, very strong roles and
accountabilities, and strong communication.
My goal for the school would be that the teachers
continue with that, that it's sustainable, that
they're going to keep reflecting on their practice
and think of teaching as something that's ongoing
and research based and exciting, and you have to
really get in the classroom and see what you can
do with your practice to help the children.
We are very happy to help anybody who would like
to contact us to talk about our journey, the mistakes
we made, the goals, the gains, and where to from here.
So, that's a very genuine offer.
♪ Closing Music ♪