DAY 4 at St Joseph's Como. Prue and Anne-Maree

When considering your home school what might be some approaches you could put to your staff for consideration? Why are the learning environments engaging? What is going on to ensure each student progresses?

1.

Today we were able to see part of 'AIM' (Achievement Integration Model) in action in one of the Year 4 classrooms. It was great to see engaged students working at their own pace and level. AIM was developed by a number of teachers and authors one of whom works at St Joseph's. The link to the academic paper can be found here. This model is about enhancing academic self-efficacy and metacognition skills. Students must as part of this process develop their own inquiry question to explore as part of the unit. It has a range of supports that can include models such as Bloom's Taxonomy, Kaplan etc to differentiate learning activities and uses an 'understanding by design' planning process around the syllabus outcomes.

-learning intention shared students via google doc on learning log

-students develop a critical inquiry question related to a unit they have been working on  (HSIE/S&T/PDHPE etc) this question guides their learning

-they are not allowed to 'google' the answers and must use a variety of sources of information.

-after developing a question they must choose a a Multi modal method of delivery. 

-they are given 10 hours over two weeks to work on research and presentations.

-Assessment and evaluation can include a range of rubrics, testing, learning/reflection journals (created in Google Docs)

-The daily learning journals are powerful with students reflecting on what went well, what didn't and the teacher is able to feedback through the journal. They record these via a google doc shared with the teacher. 

-Students present their work to a variety of audiences at the conclusion of the unit. The students present simultaneously each setting up their own area using a variety of multi-model designs to students from other classes. Students and parents move freely from project to project and underperformance is also presented. 

Yesterday we saw this at play in year 6 and today in year 4. One of the students we spoke to had created a PowerPoint for her presentation but was working on palm cards for any questions that came as a result of the presentation. 

2. Teacher Dashboard - a great tool for sharing google drive with students and manage student work. Teachers are able to see what students are doing through their account and when. It creates an easy, paperless way to share learning. It's something that think would have an endless capability within our schools.

3. Robotics - 

Robotics is used as a whole class intervention but is specifically designed for working with underachieving students. From year 3 students at St Joseph's have one session a week. It is highly engaging and encourages 

- problem solving

- basic programming

- responsible  risk taking 

- mathematic calculations and graphing