About Me

In 2013 Boronia Primary school and Boronia Heights College will merge to form a new K-12 school on the current Boronia Priamary school site. In 2011 two staff from the Primary School (Chris Kors and Davina Ashworth)and two staff from the Secondary School (Sandy Johnstone and Rachel Gardiner) are investigating P-12 and K-12 schools around the state. We are looking at how the schools are structured and how they operate in the new style Open Learning Spaces. We have been given 50 days of Teacher Professional Leave (TPL) to help better understand the best way to work in this style of school environment. Our TPL enquiry question is; How can we as a group of new colleagues build a professional learning community which enables us to work collaboratively and develop shared norms for positive teaching strategies within a K-12 setting?

Sunday 16 October 2011

CROSS CAMPUS VISITS

Thank you to everyone for welcoming one another into your classrooms. Staff from both campuses have indicated they enjoyed and valued the opportunity to see the other campus in action.
We have looked at the reflection sheets.
It was noted that the Secondary staff are working very hard giving the very difficult circumstances of shrinking numbers and poorly maintained environment. It was also noted that staff are being very creative with timetabling to give students a wide variety of subjects.
Most people who visited the Primary campus commented on the strong and consistent use of routines and rituals along with the bright and inviting atmosphere. This was partly attributed to a lot of student work displays.
One of the main differences appears to be the atmosphere in staffrooms. All primary staff do use the central staffroom whereas the secondary tend to stay in their own areas.
Please take some time to look at the graphs at the bottom of the page that have been compiled from the information on the feedabck sheets.

Sunday 9 October 2011

Laverton 9-12 Learning Community

At the end of term 3 we revisited Laverton P-12 to see their newly opened 9-12 Learning Community.
The 9-12 LC caters for 240 students with 23 allocated teaching staff and 3 aides. The smooth running of this learning community was greatly attributed to a clear set of shared norms and behavioural guidelines. There was a clear process for students who did not follow these guidelines to remove them from classes. The importance of having a defined set of routines, rituals and expectations has become more and more obvious as our investigation has proceeded. These findings have led us to divert our focus this term to developing (with staff collaboration) a set of shared norms that we can start to implement in both schools in 2012 in preparation for the merger.
Teaching staff in this learning community have indicated that 90% of behavioural issues have ceased due to the extra support from other teachers in the space and the presence of the LC Principal to deal with serious issues immediately. There is now less of the petty stuff like having no pen so the focus can be on more serious behaviours.
Most staff have now indicated they do not want to go back to having a single classroom as they value the support from their colleagues that this type of open space provides.
Once again there is specific planning time given each term for teams to develop curriculum and strategies for teaching and learning.
As in the junior and middle LC's there are not enough tables and chairs for all students and ICT was predominant.