Deputy Principal (Kelly Anderson)
Skills for Lifelong Learning - Enterprise Skills
Personal and Social Capability
In the Western Australian Curriculum, students develop personal and social capability as they learn to understand themselves and others, and manage their relationships, lives, work and learning more effectively.
The capability involves students in a range of practices including recognising and regulating emotions, developing empathy for others and understanding relationships, establishing and building positive relationships, making responsible decisions, working effectively in teams, handling challenging situations constructively and developing leadership skills.
The Personal and Social capability learning continuum is organised into four interrelated elements.
Self-awareness
This element involves students in identifying and describing the factors that influence their emotional responses.
Students:
- recognise emotions
- recognise personal qualities and achievements
- understand themselves as learners
- develop reflective practice
Self-management
This element involves students in effectively regulating, managing and monitoring their own emotional responses, and persisting in completing tasks and overcoming obstacles.
Students:
- express emotions appropriately
- develop self-discipline and set goals
- work independently and show initiative
- become confident, resilient and adaptable
Social awareness
This element involves students recognising others’ feelings and knowing how and when to assist others.
Students:
- appreciate diverse perspectives
- contribute to civil society
- understand relationships
Social management
This element involves students in interacting effectively and respectfully with a range of adults and peers.
Students:
- communicate effectively
- work collaboratively
- make decisions
- negotiate and resolve conflict
- develop leadership skills
Strategies that support this capability are:
- Project-based learning
- Cooperative learning activities
- Tasks that provide opportunities to collaborate, problem-solve and push their higher order thinking skills
- Reflection and Evaluation during and at the completion of tasks - individually and as a team
- Dedicated social and emotional learning programs
- Getting involved in clubs and leadership roles within the school
- Being in a diverse school community, where they get to meet students from many different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds
Learning Environment
Signalling the type of response you want from students is the next skill we will be exploring.Call outs can cause a lot of disruption and often end up ruining class discussions. They often reduce accountability to zero, but they often tend to be the default response.
To prevent call outs occurring, the teacher just needs to clearly state how they want the students to respond prior to asking questions.
Oral responses are:
1. Put up your hand
2. Don’t put up your hand, I’ll ask someone to respond
3. Invite call-outs (whole class brainstorming)
4. Choral response – whole class responds together
5. Tell your neighbour
The teacher can also ask students to write their responses down as an alternative to an oral response.
Some teachers use popsticks with students’ names on them, to create randomness with regards to who gets called upon, or you can even get apps that do the same thing.
School Board Staff Rep needed
Looking for a leadership opportunity? Contact Kelly and get involved in the BSHS School Board.
The School Board is the governing body of the school. It supports school improvement and provides input into future directions. Staff representation is an important part of this process, so please consider taking up this role.
Nominations to Kelly by COB Wednesday 9 March, please. Kelly.Anderson@education.wa.edu.au
Workload Advisory Committee
Calling for any submissions for workload issues - here is the link again.
We also need some new staff representatives, so please indicate your interest in being on this committee. It generally only meets once a term for approximately an hour.
Nominations to Kelly by COB Friday 11 March, please. Kelly.Anderson@education.wa.edu.au