As a teaching team, we have recently had the opportunity to work with Anna Korab, our writing consultant from Melbourne and we are looking forward to working with Hilton Ayrey, our reading consultant from New Zealand, at the end of the month.
Anna worked with teachers across five teams and also ran the staff meeting where the focus was on persuasive writing. The teachers worked on developing persuasive writing assessment checklists with a focus on teaching progression and the use of common meta-language across all year levels.
When Hilton arrives at the end of the month he will be working with some of our teachers on comprehension strategies as they learn to unpack the literal meaning of a sentence, recognise roadblocks (unfamiliar words) as they are reading, teach reading for critical thinking and move our students into holding onto the big picture of the text and being able to provide quick summaries of the content while they are reading.
Last week some of our team also had the opportunity to attend a two-day Maths Pathway conference where they attended sessions on curriculum, pedagogy, rich learning and engaging our students from Year 4 – 6 in the learning journey of maths. Maths Pathway was the host but the teachers brought the collective wisdom which made these sessions so successful. See if you can spot some of our wonderful Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6 teachers in the photo below.
Focusing on capability is an essential element of successful inclusive education. Teachers and broader personnel should be supported to develop and improve their professional practice in order to effectively respond to student diversity.
Supporting teachers to implement evidence-based and effective teaching practices is part of a proactive intention. Helping build teacher capacity which has a flow on effect to the children that are in their care and who they teach, is of the utmost importance here at GCC.
Challenge for the Week:
“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.”
John Cotton Dana
Gail Mitchell – Head of Primary