From the PDHPE classroom to history, science and beyond, teachers at Queenwood School are working to raise the bar in discipline-specific writing skills – and an instructional framework is paving the way.
As a progressive school from the start, Queenwood has always given a student’s wellbeing priority. In the Junior School, the girls have one class teacher who gets to know that girl and her family well, and can quickly respond to the needs of the girl as necessary. However, as girls enter high school, they enter a different environment where they have multiple teachers each day.
If you could only study one subject what would it be? Surely a serious consideration would have to be Geography. When discussing with parents what their daughters will be studying through their years in Geography at Queenwood, they are frequently surprised that we won’t be learning the capital cities of some of the 195 countries or learning to read maps most lessons! Instead, Geography plays a crucial role in understanding our world.
Over a decade ago, the teaching of Indigenous histories and cultures was identified as a priority in the Australian Curriculum, to allow students ‘to engage in reconciliation, respect and recognition of the world’s oldest continuous living cultures’ (Melbourne Declaration). My concern has always been about the implementation of that priority when teachers themselves have not been taught, either in their schooling or university training, which means that even well-meaning attempts to teach such culture and history can easily end up being superficial, misleading or even unintentionally disrespectful.
It is easy for adults to label children, even from an early age. How many times have you heard someone say, “She is just so shy”? The impact of these words can be staggering. Yet, children change and develop significantly over time. Unfortunately, labels do have a tendency to stick.
Taking responsibility for our own lives is hard work. It is mental effort that we would all like to avoid – and that includes our children. They will assume the mental load of taking responsibility for themselves only if the circumstances require it. As parents and teachers, our duty is to shape circumstances such that they will demand personal responsibility of our children.
Teachers regularly assess students in terms of the effort they put into their schoolwork. Effort is crucial to success and to assist students to rise to their potential we need to help them find the right kind of motivation. So which type of motivation are we talking about? Intrinsic motivation? Extrinsic motivation? Or perhaps a combination of both?
Teaching about a nation’s past, particularly about dark or confronting events, remains as contested as ever. As a History teacher, I’m often struck by the topics students engage with and those they do not.
Destination Moon: more missions, more science is the school theme for National Science Week in 2019, which begins on Monday. The theme is designed to reignite the passion for solving problems that sometimes seem unsolvable, with a particular focus on space. Big picture thinking is required to solve problems in Science. Teachers at Queenwood are inspiring students to undertake their own ‘big picture’ thinking in a number of ways.
We often forget how lucky we are to live in such a privileged part of the world and take for granted the opportunities and resources available to us. Despite how fortunate we are, we cannot always protect children from some of the harsh realities of our world.
The vision of WLSA is to create a community of schools which ‘advocate for the development of open-minded, resilient and responsible global leaders who can re-shape how we want to live and work with each other in the world‘.