Articles

Maximising impact on student learning: high effect size strategies in a science classroom As an early career teacher, more so than experienced teachers, you are exposed to numerous teaching practices that all work to enable greater student learning. These varying practices are all supported by copious amounts of evidence and all prove to be appealing to a newly graduate teacher. It creates a problem – they can’t all be implemented at once, but how do we know which practices we should be using and which will work best? What if there was a way to identify which teaching practices would lead to the greatest impact on students’ learning? In Visible Learning for Science, John Hattie shares his findings from conducting meta-analyses of more than 80,000 studies and 300 million students (Hattie, 2012) to decipher what strategies for delivering learning experiences will have the greatest influence on student learning. Teachers can view each facet of teaching in a new light, uncovering what they should be prioritising in order to maximise student learning and engagement.

Using AI to set students straight and streamline assessment The thing about plagiarism or maybe paying someone else to write your paper for you is that it is counter-productive. So a student might have managed to pull a fast one and perhaps received a good mark but it’s kind of self-defeating in that they will not have learned much.

Bullying is universal and worst for low SES boys Bullying happens all over the world and the same group of people suffers from it the worst. Adolescent boys from lower socio-economic backgrounds are most likely to be the victims of bullying, but there is a wide variation in prevalence.

Training lets young teachers thrive in challenging environments Inspiring Torres Strait Islanders with English as a second language is part of the toolkit for a new breed of teachers trained to work in Australia’s most challenging and remote classrooms.

Oral language skills predict young children’s success in the classroom and life Communication, curiosity and conversation are key predictors of young children’s success later in life, according to new best practice resources on early childhood education launched in Brisbane this week.

Wakakirri Story Dance on track for a spectacular 2020 Wakakirri is 28 years young and still growing strongly. Australia’s largest performing arts event for schools welcomed 38,000 students from almost 300 schools performing in 52 shows at 14 venues nationally in 2019.

The issue of engagement The process of learning to cooperate with others begins very early in life – often it is a sandpit experience. A term I often use when asked what I do is that “I teach people how to play nicely in the sandpit”.

Delivering Project Based Learning Having students engage with real world problems with project based learning is one of the better ways of delivering knowledge and encouraging soft skills like communication and cooperation. It can take many forms and some help in formulating a PBL initiative has to be welcome.

Educator Impact Pulse measures ongoing school and student wellbeing In 1961, John F Kennedy announced a goal for humans to walk on the moon. At about the same time, an industrialist called Henry Kremer announced a series of prizes worth $2.5m in today’s dollars, for a seemingly more modest goal: to fly under human power, over the English Channel.

Capture them young! Engaging students with technology Integrating technology across the curriculum and offering clubs and events like ‘Coding & Robotics’, Inter-house Robotics Competition, STEMies and 'TechMate', inspires students to create with technology.

Prof Pasi Sahlberg to debate the power of play in nature Finnish educator Professor Pasi Sahlberg will be keynote speaker at a free public forum on the Power of Play in Nature at The Concourse, Chatswood on Thursday 5 March.

Teach For Australia looking for Associates Applications are now open to join Teach For Australia’s newest cohort of Associates (teachers) through its Leadership Development Program.