From the Principal
Bonjour à tous, welcome to Term 3. Thank you for your participation yesterday. I hope that you enjoyed the program and you were able to get your learning area review completed during the learning area time. Your contributions to the IPS School Review is very valued and appreciated. A lot of news was given so this will be a very short edition.
Across the holidays I meet with other Principals and the Director General regarding a potential reschedule of Country Week in Term 4. I don’t see this as being likely but we have been asked to ask our school community which we will do.
This term the Minister for Education will visit to open the Cafeteria. This was scheduled for the start of the year but was cancelled due to a lockdown. The visit will coincide with the following announcements:
- The $1 million dollars towards STEM in the school
- The establishment of a Follow the Dream Hub at Bunbury Senior High School
Term 3 is the start of a new semester and a great time to get the students to set some academic goals and to refocus. Term 1 we focussed on Classroom Management Strategies, Term 2 on Strategies for High Expectations and our shared Instructional framework. In Term 3, we will keep the focus in the classroom looking at Questioning Techniques.
Have a great term!
En Avant
Mike Sinagra
Principal
NUTS AND BOLTS
SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT DAY
There will be two school development days this term. The next will be in week 6 on Monday 23 August. This day will be dedicated to the professional learning required to deliver the social and emotional learning program that we have for Year 7 & 8 students next year.
I am also very interested in feedback regarding the SDD. Please click the link to give your feedback.
QUESTIONING AND FEEDBACK
Questioning and feedback often cross through the strategies for High Expectations and CMS. Therefore, we will start where we left off last term with
Say it again Better
Ask a student a question
Use any question technique that you usually use
- Cold Calling
- Think Pair Share
- Check for understanding
Acknowledge the first answer
Be positive about the first response given. If it is a half-formed answer falling short of being excellent respond with something like. “That’s a good start but let’s develop that further”. If they are simply wrong say something like “Good try, but that not quite right. Let’s see what we need to do to make it right”.
Give supportive feedback
Invite the students to consider more specific ways to respond that will improve the answer.
- “What’s a more technical term/”
- “Is there a more complex pattern here?”
- “Can you include a reason for that opinion?”
Invite students to say it again better
After exploring what a better answer might look like, ask the same student to have another attempt to improve their answer. This is important to check for understanding as well as give the student a feeling of success from having generated a higher quality response.
Respond to the improved answer
Decide if the response is of sufficient quality before moving on. Give affirmative praise or repeat the process until you have the quality of answer required. The effect of this is to demonstrate to the student that they are capable of excellent responses.