Category Archives: Instruction

EPS visits Jefferson Elementary School in New York

This blog entry is the eighth in a series from the team visiting schools in the States and comes to you from the ‘Big Apple.’ Today we visited Jefferson Elementary School (K-5), located in upstate New York in a town called … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Assessment, Data Wise Program, Instruction, Leadership, school, Teaching | 2 Comments

Elsternwick PS meets Tobin Montessori in Boston

Continuing the series of posts written by Jess, Erin and Sarah 3 teachers attending the Harvard Institute and now visiting schools. Today we visited The Tobin School in Cambridge. This school was familiar to us, as we had read about … Continue reading

Posted in Assessment, Data Wise Program, Harvard, Instruction, Networks of Schools, school, Teaching | 2 Comments

Data Wise: Summer Institute Day 3

We are now officially over half way through the course, and what a whole lot of learning has taken place. We feel that in a sense there has been growth on four different levels – personal, team, school and beyond … Continue reading

Posted in Assessment, Data Wise Program, Harvard, Instruction, Teaching, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Data Wise: Summer Institute: Day 1

This series of posts are being written by three teachers Erin, Jess and Sarah and Penny the Assistant Principal who are all attending or part of the teaching team at the Harvard University Data Wise Institute.  Well, we’ve just finished … Continue reading

Posted in Data Wise Program, Harvard, Instruction, Teaching, Video Clips | 1 Comment

Stop bashing public education for the tsunami effect will be big and long lasting.

I’m indebted to Greg Whitby for provoking me to write this post when he wrote on a quality education for all. Greg, I think was stirred by Prof Dinham when he recently wrote in the Age newspaper about what he perceived … Continue reading

Posted in China, Community, Instruction, Leadership, teacher efficacy, Teaching, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Michael McQueen on navigating around student engagement.

This is the second post from that Principal’s conference I attended last term. The theme if your read the first post (McCrindle) was on social trends and their impact on education, schools and teachers. We were fortunate to have two … Continue reading

Posted in Instruction, teacher efficacy, Teaching, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

time for great teaching – a report on how

  I’ve recently read the Gratton Report “Making time for great teaching“. In the executive summary is says: Government regulations restrict schools. Enterprise bargaining agreements restrict changes to work schedules, and duty of care requirements restrain schools that want to … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Collaborative Communities, Data Wise Program, Feedback, Instruction, Monash University, Observation | 1 Comment

Keeping earlier improvements alive – a constant juggling act for school leaders.

Have you ever wondered how you keep earlier improvement work on the slow boil whilst undertaking more recent deeper work? I know this is a constant challenge for school leaders particularly as new teachers who often unfamiliar with the earlier … Continue reading

Posted in Feedback, Leadership, Reading, Teaching | 1 Comment

Feedback and Instruction

Recently I gave a presentation for the Brisbane Catholic Education Office titled “Feedback and Instruction”. I was trying to make several points: that teacher feedback is best received in a school culture that openly advocates feedback for all, including school … Continue reading

Posted in Feedback, Instruction, Leadership, Teaching | Leave a comment

Is drill and kill the right approach to learning to spell?

My headline is in lots of ways misleading for there is no one right way to learn to spell efficiently in English. In the 60’s and 70’s we made students learn to spell lists of words through repetition or drill … Continue reading

Posted in Assessment, differentiation, Instruction, Teaching | 10 Comments

How many years do you think it takes to develop expertise in teaching?

Thanks to Greg Whitby for writing about Andy Hargreaves and Michel Fullan’s latest work on Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School, I particularly liked Hargreaves suggestion that it takes around eight years or 10,000 hours to develop expertise in … Continue reading

Posted in Instruction, Leadership, Teaching | Leave a comment

Instructional Rounds and Data Wise.

Last week I facilitated an Instructional Round at a neighbouring school and tried to embrace some of the principles of Data Wise into the evidentiary analysis of the observations. The initiative was well received so I thought I would share … Continue reading

Posted in Data Wise Program, Feedback, Harvard, Instruction, Instructional Rounds, Observation, school, Teaching, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Data Wise at Elsternwick, a Harvard perspective.

Last month David Rease Jnr from Harvard visited Elsternwick to view our progress in implementing the Data Wise: Inquiry Approach to Improving Instruction in schools. We were quite chuffed at David’s visit and recorded this clip  to capture some of his … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Assessment, Data Wise Program, Harvard, Instruction, Instructional Rounds, school, Video Clips | Leave a comment

‘Words their Way’ Spelling Workshop.

Recently we held another teacher workshop on the “Words their Way” approach to spelling. I’ve talked about this approach before, which we have trialled in different year levels for some 18 months. All of our trial results have been positive … Continue reading

Posted in Instruction, Teaching | Leave a comment

Is the Olympics just about winning gold medals?

Context of this post: This morning I’m teaching a group of year 5/6 students. The WALT (We are learning to…) is join an online discussion via a blog and make a comment. Post: An overseas friend made a light-hearted  jib … Continue reading

Posted in Instruction, Teaching, Technology | 17 Comments