From Melinda James
Dear Families
Premier’s Reading Challenge
With the school holidays approaching, this could be an ideal opportunity for your child to read some books. Our Reception – Year 2 students will complete the challenge in class. Students in Years 3-6 wishing to complete the Premiers Reading Challenge will need to complete the challenge at home and return the completed form to their class teacher by the beginning of September. If you need another form they can be found on this Student Reading Records | Premiers Reading Challenge SA.
Nativity’s work with Student Agency (continued)
In this post we continue to look at the work that our students and teachers have been doing with Student Agency. The following work provides examples of the learning carried out in our Year 5/6 classrooms.
Year 5/6 HASS
You are shipwrecked! Your boat has sunk, and you have no way of getting off the deserted island that you have landed on. You have no food, no drinking water and no way of communicating. What do you do? What is your survival plan?
Students in both year 5/6 classes were presented with this problem as part of their work in Geography. The provocation allowed students to show a unique understanding of different geographical elements whilst displaying a high level of engagement.
Students began unpacking the learning intention of: The influence of people on the characteristics of places and in the management of spaces. Students unpacked the meaning of the words and what that means to them.
Students were asked to represent the provocation in any way they wanted, it was up to them to show their thinking and understanding. No explicit instruction were provided on what students could do which left a few students were asking questions which began with ‘Can I do…’ or ‘Do you think this is a good idea.’ This resulted in quite a few different designs with many students taking a different direction in representing their provocation. It was clear that they appreciated using agency in their learning as many had a high sense of pride in their work and decided to share their provocations with the class.
Science in 5/6HR
To engage students and support them to be passionate about their learning 5/6 HR have been committed to taking student agency further. Beginning with a provocation in science, students unpacked the learning intention, created their own success criteria, and then worked together as a class to create our own assessment rubric. Students independently worked on their own task after creating their own success criteria. Have a look at the video to see our journey and some student examples.
This term, we have had a snapshot into the various ways that we are developing student agency across the school. I would like to end with the following quote…
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein
Kind regards
Melinda James
