The project team

The teachers in the team found that the earlier professional learning led by the cluster Principal Leader established a really positive culture and a collective understanding within the group and helped them to develop their own protocols for team meetings.

Originally team meetings were led by the Principal as she felt it was important that she was seen as being supportive through her involvement. After a couple of meetings, she made a conscious decision to withdraw from the team to give responsibility to the rest of the group for collaborating, planning and implementing the project.

The upper primary team’s challenge was to make better use of teacher resources and available Teacher Assistant (TA) time during the Indonesian time slot, to provide learning experiences that would engage all learners.

Another aim was to decrease the dependence of specific students on their TA. With the combination of ideas from all team members a consensus was reached and a potential solution came with the idea of restructuring lesson times and structures. The team thought that by creating three different student groups from the 5 / 6 classes they could better utilise their staff and expertise.

The student groups

One of the initial challenges was to divide the students into three suitable groups. It was decided to organise groups according to students' interests. One group was an all boys group and included the two students on the Register of Students with Severe Disabilities and another student who required additional support with his behaviour. One group became an all girls group and the final one was a mixed gender group. The three groups each had a numeracy focus for learning. The group with boys had a hands-on technology theme, the group with girls focused on architecture and design and the mixed group had an overarching LOTE focus.

Once the groupings were finalised, the team created a draft learning sequence. From there, teachers spent time individually adapting the learning sequence for their group. The team members shared their ideas with the rest of the group to confirm that they were all on a similar track and then began the implementation of the learning. 

Organisation

The day on which the collaborative teaming was to occur was the day on which the LOTE (Indonesian) teacher was at the school. On that day (Tuesday) the two 5 / 6 classes had a consecutive 45 minute Indonesian lesson during the first morning block.

This was then modified to allow the groups to have a full hour and a half in their new groupings. 

Meetings

  Monthly team meetings were held. The team used the meeting protocol that they had experienced in cluster meetings. The reason for the meeting was clearly stated, an agenda was set and clear and concise notes were taken at the meeting—this ensured also that teacher aides could follow up on discussions.

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