Our+other+strategies

We have tried a number of initiatives to improve student engagement.

One strategy was to broaden our experiences with outside events and competitions. We hoped this would help with connectedness as well. Each teacher and most specialists and leaders chose a special project to manage and implement at some point during the year. The aim was to give us a chance to experiment with a range of different opportunities to see what might suit us in the future. Teachers were free to decide whether to try out their event with just their grade, with their year level or with the whole school. So far, we have had a whole school Ride 2 School morning and breakfast, the preps and year 1s participated in World Colouring Day and some year 2 and year 6 students are exploring the potential of digital portfolios, among other things. Here is a digital portfolio that is under development in Wikispaces: Abbey's Portfolio

We also introduced scheduled times for teachers in each level to meet with the Teaching and Learning Leader twice a term to review our inquiry units. The meetings allowed us to share resources and ideas to benefit from our collective wisdom. They were also a time to make sure documentation was up to date, and to discuss ideas for how to proceed with the units based on student responses so far.

Another element we dabbled with was more actively engaging the school community in different ways. The Ride 2 School Day was a great start. We also invited parents to talk to students about their learning during our Learning to Learn unt.