Teach the Teacher and Pivot Surveys
Throughout week 5 and 6 of term 1, teachers conducted Pivot surveys with all their classes. Pivot surveys are designed to collect feedback from the students about the teaching and learning taking place in the classroom. Completing these surveys empowers student voice and agency
Following the data collection, teachers engaged in a professional learning session on how we can effectively act on student feedback to adapt teaching to support the voice of students in individual classrooms. This session supported the planning and running of Pivot conversations in the classroom, where the focus was to delve into the data to better understand the ‘Areas of Celebration’ and ‘Areas for Conversation.
At a whole school level, students volunteered to analyse the whole school data and use this to run a professional learning session called Teach the Teacher. In the planning, students decided the most valuable ‘Area for Conversation’ was students having choice in their learning/application tasks. The Teach the Teacher group brainstormed, planned and presented an entire session for the Teachers, which was very positively received. Teachers left this space inspired by the use of more Mild, Medium and Spicy (increase in challenge tasks) and the opportunities to give students choice in the way they present their learning.
Here is some of the Feedback from our teachers about the students running this session –
‘Students were really engaging, and I got a lot of great ideas from it’
‘Students were very articulate and engaged with ideas’
‘What an amazing group of outstanding individuals! They presented do confidently and had some challenging conversations with teachers about how to improve’
‘Thank you! Not only for your time, but your ideas and considerations and for having a growth mindset about change opportunities’
Year Level Assemblies
Over week 9 and 10, student leaders have been working to plan and prepare for their Year Level Assemblies. These assemblies are framed around celebration, where students and teachers, with the support of the Year Level Leaders and Student Leaders reflect on the growth throughout the term. Students prepared scripts and a slide deck that shared all of the wins, and sometimes the challenges that were overcome over the term. We celebrated the newly elected Tutor Group Leaders, students who have had the highest learning behaviours and the highest learning behaviour growth, those with 100% attendance for term 1 and all of the activities and events students have participated in.
The Year Level Leaders each left the students with reflections on where we have been, where we are now and where we want to be going in term 2.
Year 7’s through Mr Sheidaee and Madame Beck set a pledge to be kind and show inclusive behaviour.to all within the Year Level.
Year 8’s through Madame Marie and Mr Leach discussed how they can be best ready to learn and how to celebrate their successes.
Year 9’s through Dr Phillipson celebrated everything that the Year 9’s have achieved particularly through City Cite and their City Cite presentations, alongside the power of Thank you.
Year 10’s through Madame Wong-Fat and Ms Sutherland shared advice from Year 11’s to the Year 10’s about what they can reflect on, celebrate and start to prepare for as the commence their senior school journey.
Year 11’s through Mr Scarcella and Ms Mangano discussed the concept of ‘Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard’ to support the thinking about pathways in senior school.
And Mr Macpherson and Ms Jayasuriya spoke to the grit and growth mindset needed as there begins to be an end point for our Year 12 cohort.