The Hedland Network of schools are working together to create a Professional Learning Community to support the implementation of the Western Australian Curriculum, including the Australian Curriculum, in our schools. This is a K-12 approach that promotes and supports sharing within and across schools to ensure all of our students participate in relevant, engaging and challenging learning programs focused on the Australian Curriculum. This is further facilitated through the development of support materials, resources and planning documents to assist staff with implementing the Australian Curriculum into their teaching, learning and assessment programs.

Thursday 15 August 2013

Planning Documents

As part of our Professional Learning Community, the teachers at Port Hedland Primary School collaborated to design a planning proforma. We used the planning document devised by Woodlands PS as part of their role as a Teacher Development School, as a springboard, and tailored it to meet the specific needs if the teachers and students in our context.

The document provides you with the Year Level Description so that you can set the context of your teaching/learning program. You can then identify the Content Description/s that you will teach and assess against-the what.

The back page of the document allows you to plan how you will teach the content, with visual reminders of some of the instructional strategies that you may choose to use in your lesson. We have also included a table to record the types of literature you used with your class to ensure a wide variety of text types are used in your teaching/learning programs.



Wednesday 14 August 2013

Our Professional Learning Network

The Hedland Network of schools are working together to create a Professional Learning Community to support the implementation of the Western Australian Curriculum, including the Australian Curriculum, in our schools. This is a K-12 approach that promotes and supports sharing within and across schools to ensure all of our students participate in relevant, engaging and challenging learning programs focused on the Australian Curriculum. This is further facilitated through the development of support materials, resources and planning documents to assist staff with implementing the Australian Curriculum into their teaching, learning and assessment programs.

As a network of schools we participate in Professional Learning (PL) for the Australian Curriculum each term. Baler Primary School, Cassia Primary School, Cassia Educational Support Unit, Port Hedland Primary School, Port Hedland School of the Air, South Hedland Primary School, Marble Bar Remote Community School and Yandeyarra Remote Community School are all participants. In 2013, the Kindergarten to Year 2 teachers attended AC: English PL and the Year 3 to Year 7 teachers attended AC:Maths, provided in concurrent sessions  by our Regional/ Network Train the Trainers. In 2014 the groups will swap over.

Action Learning Cycles are an integral part of the Australian Curriculum: English PL. Action Learning allows teachers to put into practice their learning from the PL back in the classroom. When teachers return to the next PL session, they  share their Action Learning in small groups focusing on how they used the English Content Descriptions to plan engaging and challenging learning experiences. The sharing session focuses on “what worked well” (www) as well as the teacher reflecting on the lesson with a focus on “even better if” (ebi) to make adjustments and improvements for their planning/teaching/assessment cycle. Participants then invite feedback and input from group members to further improve the teacher’s learning/teaching program.

Below are some photos of the Action Learning Cycle we ran on the Australian Curriculum: English PL day at the start of Term 3. Hopefully there are some ideas here that you can use in your learning/teaching programs.

 Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae



 The Bad Tempered Ladybird





Pre-Primary






 Diary of a Spider

Kindergarten
The Rabbits by Shaun Tan







 Year 2/3


 The Three Little Pigs-Readers Theatre

 Forgiven by A.A. Milne


Ziba Came on a Boat