Greetings everyone in the IEPS community;
Firstly thank-you to everyone for the warm welcome to the school, it has been a very enjoyable first few days. It always takes a bit of time to adjust to a new environment but the feeling of support has made it as easy as it possibly could be. I’d like to thank Justine Mackie and Adrienne Dudley for their help in getting things up and running.
Our Pupil Free Day on Monday had two key areas of focus. The first of these was to really drill down on processes and protocols that are central to Writers Notebook. This involved our School Literacy team presenting a general overview of the program .They also provided some specific instruction around the elements that make up the program such as the mini- lessons-goal setting and conferencing. Thanks to Amanda Dwyer and her team for running these valuable sessions
The second part of the day involved our School Evidence team facilitating the development of Student Learning goals. Having seen some of the work that has already been done in classrooms it would be fair to say that IEPS is absolutely on track. Ben Phillips and his Evidence team did some fantastic pre-work in getting everyone one the same page and providing great direction.
So why is the focus on these areas important?
There is a significant body of research that tells us why spending time on goal setting and consistent practice are important. One of these is a study called Visible Learning which was carried out by Professor John Hattie. In this study Professor Hattie analysed upwards of 200 actions teachers could take to enhance learning. One of the most effective of these is build student capacity to
- understand their learning and what their current learning may be
- be able to identify how they are learning
- have a clear understanding of what the next layer of work
From my early discussion with students in classrooms –they are really developing a sense of how they learn and where they are with their learning.
The second piece of research I’ll mention is a document called Great Teaching Toolkit which is an evidence review from the UK. It is a little more succinct than the Hattie study. Like Hattie it analyses a lot of research and identifies seventeen elements that make significant positive impact on learning. One of the most important of these is to set up consistent lesson structures that enable students to build confidence and independence. The Writers Workshop learning from Monday helped build that consistency within teaching teams and across year levels. I would certainly encourage parents with an interest is in finding out about teaching and learning research to have a look at Hattie and the Great Teaching Toolkit (https://www.greatteaching.com/) follow the prompts to the evidence review and then to the summary on page 6.
Anzac Day observance
Our school will be recognising Anzac Day on Monday April 26th with activities in classrooms and a ceremony over the airwaves after the morning break.
Student Voice and Agency
Student Voice and Agency is a hallmark of life at Ivanhoe East and one of the pillars is the Principal Advisory Group. I’m looking forward to our first meeting tomorrow (Thursday) when we will be dissecting the student survey responses. The School Captains have given me a brief precis of how the group works, and we look forward to implementing some of the suggestions from the students over the course of the year.
Brett Millott