Reservoir Primary SchoolLiteracy Share Day

“We are all responsible”

School Context

• Our school community is characterized by our school values of acceptance,respect, responsibility and personal excellence.

• Our students come from diverse cultural backgrounds.

• We have approximately 210 students.

• Our school has always had a strong focus on developing Literacy and Numeracy skills for all students, as well as the capacity to become successful, independent, reflective learners.

School Context• Our school has a collaborative approach involving

staff, students, parents and the wider school community.

• Together we are all committed to a culture of continual improvement and achievement.

• Professional Development with John Munro was our starting point.

• High Reliability Literacy Teaching Procedures were introduced.

• The two Learning Leaders attended these sessions.

• Followed up with whole staff at weekly curriculum meetings.

Moving forward

• Learning Leaders demonstrated the Reading Comprehension strategies.

• Introduced collegiate visits which provided opportunities for staff to observe the strategies being used.

• Area meeting structure changed to include student learning.

• Discussions focused on feedback from collegiate visits and HRLTP strategies being used.

Detour

• Implementation of HRLTP strategies was well underway.

• Teachers indicated support was needed for the more

explicit teaching of writing.

• Writing was also targeted as an area for improvement in our Annual Implementation Plan.

• John Munro was employed for a whole staff Curriculum Day to provide Professional Development in writing & to link the HRLTP strategies to our writing.

• Curriculum focused directly on what had been delivered to Learning Leaders at the AiZ PD.

• Compiling resources that support staff to use the strategies being implemented.

• Visual aides for students to help them learn to explicitly follow procedures, for example reciprocal reading stages & summarising steps.

• Further PD with Lorraine Edwards & John Munro to consolidate understanding of strategies.

• Learning Leaders developed a Literacy implementation plan which was referred to at student learning meetings.

• This enabled staff to know what strategies they should be implementing and provided a forum for teachers to discuss what they were doing and learn from each other.

• The implementation plan outlined what each of the strategies looked like in each area of the school, what the teachers would be doing, and what the students would be doing.

Staying on Track

• Learning Leaders have attended Professional Development with Lorraine Edwards.

• This complemented the HRLTP work, and added valuable strategies towards improving reading comprehension.

• The strategies we focused on with our staff were:• Teaching inference• Reading fluency• Reciprocal reading• Writing moderation- folders were compiled for each

staff member with the relevant writing samples.

Staying on Track

• Strategies were embraced by staff and found to be valuable in improving reading comprehension.

• To support the PD by Learning Leaders and for accountability, these strategies became the focus for collegiate visits.

• Through these visits Learning Leaders were able to identify if further support or PD was needed.

Cruise control

• The Key reading comprehension strategies are now well established at our school.

• All teachers are using them regularly in their day to day planning documents and in their classroom practise.

PLT Meetings

• Student learning meetings have been replaced with Professional Learning Teams. The focus remains on student learning.

• Students learning goals are being monitored based on evidence collected.

• Strategies are being discussed and ideas shared.

• Teachers are now more confident in using the key comprehension strategies.

• Teachers work in teams to collectively take on the responsibility for improving student outcomes.

• Data collected to date is showing an improvement in reading comprehension.

• A whole school Literacy plan is currently being developed in line with AiZ recommendations as well as common planning documents.

• Next year, we will be working on developing our whole school Numeracy plan that will align with our Literacy planning documents.

• PLT meetings will provide a forum enabling us to continue to focus on literacy strategies, providing sustainability for the strategies learnt.

• Collegiate visits will continue to provide opportunities for staff to reflect on teaching practises and learn from one another.

• It is an expectation that Teacher Performance Plans will continue to include the AiZ initiatives.

ReflectionReservoir & the AiZ

Being involved in the AiZ has provided our school with a platform to improve our teaching practices. It has added to our existing knowledge, and refined things we were already doing. Student progress is being monitored carefully through new and existing assessment procedures and we are seeing an improvement in student learning.