Dear Families,

Thank you to everyone who dropped into the community session held on Monday 15 February. Over 34 parents, staff and neighbours popped into the session to view the detailed plans of the three learning centres, meet the contractors and EDU project manager, and learn more about how the learning spaces will support the delivery of future focussed learning.

Detailed plans for each learning centre have been posted to the school website along with an updated site establishment map. 

Visitors to the pop in session asked some great questions about the project and the Directorate is now working to answer these. As questions are resolved, updates will be provided through the school newsletter.  

What is the timeline for the project?

Construction on the new buildings will commence shortly.  The target is that students and staff will move into the new buildings for the start of the 2022 school year. If there are any changes to the timeline, the Directorate will provide updates to the school community.

The junior wing will be demolished once everyone has moved across to the new buildings.  This work will occur during a holiday period, when no one is on the school campus. Landscaping of the outdoor area between the new buildings and the transportable classrooms will also be undertaken as a part of this project. 

The removal of the transportables and remediation of this area will be completed as part of a future business case. The timing of this work has not been finalised and the Directorate will inform us about the details once funding has been appropriated. 

Pedagogies

With the buzz of excitement around the new build a few questions have been raised around teacher pedagogies and what they involve/look like.  In each newsletter I will be providing a snapshot of different approaches to teaching and learning that we use across the school every day and will continue to use once we move into our learning communities. Each pedagogy highlighted over the coming weeks are taken from the ACT Education Directorate’s Enabling Pedagogies resource of evidence-based, high impact strategies for improving student learning and align with the ACT Public School Pedagogical Framework.

Snapshot 1: Explicit teaching

"Explicit Instruction is a structured, systematic and effective methodology for teaching academic skills. It is called explicit because it is an unambiguous and direct approach to teaching that includes both instructional design and delivery procedures. Explicit instruction is characterised by a series of supports or scaffolds, whereby students are guided through the learning process with clear statements about the purpose and rationale for learning the new skill, clear explanations and demonstrations of the instructional target, and supported practice with feedback until independent mastery has been achieved." (Archer & Hughes, 2011).

Explicit instruction refers to intentional, planned, teacher-directed interactions that purposefully target student knowledge and skills to maximise student academic growth. Explicit instruction is most successful when the teacher has strong pedagogical practices and content knowledge to guide students through a structured lesson.

It involves transparent learning intentions and success criteria, and evaluation and checking of understanding. Explicit instruction as a pedagogy is often associated with basic skills in literacy and numeracy teaching but can be used with a wide range of cognitive, social and behavioural goals and outcomes. Explicit instruction can be found in a range of teaching models including scaffolding, visible thinking strategies and the gradual release of responsibility model. As the teacher purposefully moves from assuming sole responsibility for performing the task to the students doing so, students become competent independent learners (Fisher and Frey, 2014).

Gradual Release of Responsibility Model​​​​​​​

The Gradual Release of Responsibility Model utilises explicit instruction in two of the phases of the instructional framework, Focused Instruction and Guided Instruction. As the teacher purposefully moves from assuming sole responsibility for performing a task to the students doing so, students become competent independent learners (Fisher and Frey, 2014). Through systematic and considered planning, teachers can determine the level of responsibility required for each task, and the order in which the model is used. For example, teachers may reorder the phases and begin with an independent writing task, move on to collaborative peer editing, and back to teacher modelling as a recap for the lesson. What is important in encountering new content is that students experience all phases of the model (Fisher and Frey, 2014).