15 September 2021

How can you and your school get the most out of your school improvement plan? Developing the explicit teaching of writing is a big focus in Linden Park Primary School’s school improvement plan. Find out how they’ve worked through their plan, using resources like the literacy guidebooks, and analysing data to get the best outcomes for their students.

Show Notes

• School improvement overview
• School improvement planning handbook and templates
• Preschool quality improvement planning handbook and templates
• Improvement dashboard
• Literacy and numeracy guidebooks
• Curriculum resources overview

Transcript

Dale Atkinson: Hello, and welcome back to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. I'm Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education,

Monique Miller: and I'm Monique Miller, primary school teacher at Westport primary school.

Dale Atkinson: This week, we've launched new and improved school and preschool improvement resources to use in your planning for 2022, they include refined school improvement, planning, handbooks, and templates.

Minor updates to the preschool quality improvement planning template, new scope and sequence resources, and units of work, digital literacy and numeracy guidebooks and better access to data for every teacher. These resources can support your curriculum planning.

Monique Miller: To find out how you can use the resources available to you. We're at Linden Park primary school in Adelaide's east, where they've put a big focus on improving writing.

Dale Atkinson: Deb O'Neill is the principal of Linden Park primary school. And Kane Watkins is a year seven teacher here. Welcome to you both. [00:01:00] Thank you. Thank you. So, uh, first of all, I mean, look, I'm going to start with a lazy assumption about Linden Park primary school located in the eastern suburbs, that it's got a big group of affluent kids. This is going to be an easy place to teach, but that's not the case is it? You have quite a diverse backgrounds of students. Could you tell us a bit about your school and your school community?

Deb O'Neill: So we are a very, very large primary school, the largest primary school in the state. We have over 960 students from reception to year seven.

We have over 70 different cultures represented and our English as an Additional Language and Dialect is, is up around the 70% mark. So we are very diverse. We do have a lot of students who have extremely high expectations and families that have extremely high expectations of their students, but also of the school. So it can be quite complex.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah. So we're not talking about a simple process of, of teaching, writing to a group of kids who are receptive and ready to rumble. Why was writing an area that your school decided [00:02:00] to focus on for improvement?

Deb O'Neill: When we looked at our data and analysed our data, we found that our students were scoring in higher bands consistently in numeracy and reading yet the same students were not scoring as much in higher bands in writing.

And it was actually going up and down depending on the year. And so when we looked at our NAPLAN data, and then we examined our PAT data, we identified that there were some gaps in writing. And those gaps we put down to basically, um, teaching. And so what we decided to do then was to improve and to work on our quality of teaching that we provided in writing for our students.

Dale Atkinson: And you have brought along your school improvement plan which is obviously the key tool that you're using within this process. Can you talk a little bit about your approach with it and how you've set it and how you're using that moving forward.

Deb O'Neill: So our school improvement plan is quite detailed and we use it as a roadmap for us. So we have a lot of staff engagement and buy-in [00:03:00] with the plan. Um, staff are instrumental in identifying what areas we need to focus on and then they're recorded in the site improvement plan. Staff are then are involved in reviewing that and doing constant checking and monitoring as to how we are travelling and refining the plan. If, if things aren't going quite well or things need changing, we refine the plan.

Dale Atkinson: What does that process of refinement look like? Cause I think as we're talking here, Monique's kind of nodding her head, which is obviously an experience that you have had yourself. So what does that process of refining and working with the teaching staff look like?

Deb O'Neill: Once we identify our priority areas. So for example, writing, we look at what resources we need to deliver that. And so one of our major tools, which I know Kane can talk about in a minute is around using the Brightpath assessment process. And also something we engaged in with our whole staff was a program called Writing Plus, which was a partnership initiative around the teaching [00:04:00] of grammar, functional and traditional grammar to our teachers.

So that those teachers actually knew the aspects of writing that we needed to teach. When we do our Brightpath assessment, we also do an analysis of which aspects of writing are going well. Um, from looking at the student work and which aspects of writing, we need more input and more staff training. And then we engage in another training cycle.

Staff are involved in keeping track of the plan. So they, they look at the targets, they look at the success criteria in their learning teams, and then they give themselves a score, whether they're on track or it needs attention or whether it's not on track at all. And then we start developing some programs and plans to achieve that criteria.

Monique Miller: Kane I'd love to hear how you're involved in that process?

Kane Watkins: Sure. So specifically with writing, basically all staff are provided with adequate training to try and upskill them so that they're better able to actually teach explicitly the curriculum. So the writing plus training and development that Deb spoke about was [00:05:00] one of those training and development that we all undertook.

And there's a strong focus there on functional grammar, which better enables you to actually direct student learning to key areas that are needing development. We also, we've done smarter spelling training as well, which is about the teaching of synthetic phonics as part of your language curriculum and the Brightpath assessment and writing tool as well. That plays a huge part of, I think, of our success in terms of just delivering the curriculum.

Monique Miller: And so important for the whole school to be on board, taking that same training and implementing it across from reception to year seven.

Kane Watkins: Yeah it just ensures continuity of learning across the site. But also I think it allows you or enables you to have those professional conversations and dialogues with colleagues that are really what, that, that that's sort of the foundation of what moves learning forward.

Deb O'Neill: So we engage in moderation in our year level teams. So all the year seven teachers would get together and look at different assessments, samples and do a, I guess, a cold score. [00:06:00] And then they discuss it and do some moderation, but we've also done moderation vertically, teachers from reception to year seven, each bring a sample of writing that they would consider a medium sample and then they share it amongst each other and they look at the aspects. And so there's a lot of that vertical as well as horizontal moderation. So we are all on the same page in relation to our Brightpath assessment.

Kane Watkins:Those conversations are really key. I think it keeps everybody on track and make sure that we're, we're all working towards the same goal. It also just makes sure that we're constantly checking in with the site improvement plan for making sure that what we're doing is true to purpose.

Dale Atkinson: And what sort of frequency are you looking at for those sorts of activities?

Kane Watkins:So the Brightpath moderation side of things, we do that in term one and term three, and that's hugely valuable. Term one more as a formative assessment tool. Um, term three, you can almost draw out some summative assessment as well in that, but those conversations are happening in the moderation process.

They're really what empowers us [00:07:00] to pass relevant and timely feedback onto the kids that we're working with. And it also enables us to have those conversations with the students when we get them looking at their own writing and using that same assessment tool.

Monique Miller: And you would use that to set goals and things they're writing, using those teaching points from the Brightpath

Kane Watkins:Absolutely so, um, the process typically is we'll actually as, as staff within our year level teams ,we will um, once the kids have sat the Brightpath reading assessment, we'll get together, then the school actually provides support for that as well. So we're released to do this, which is really valuable. We sit together and we'll actually cold score each of those writing assessments for all the students in our classes, we'll often have those conversations, collegial conversations around justifying why you gave the score that you did, um, which is hugely valuable as well, because it really gets you to think about what am I looking at here and, and on, on, um, on balanced view.

Exactly. Thank you. So once that process is done, we go back to the students. We get them to use the same assessment tool that [00:08:00] we use in Brightpath to assess their own work. And we do that without actually telling them what we've scored their paper at. And then we give them our score and them to have a look and compare.

And does the score match up, if it does match up that's fantastic. If it doesn't, why doesn't it match up? So just developing that metacognition around why have I got the score I've got, if I'm looking at what's the next step for my writing, I should be able to look at what's in my writing and the assessment criteria, and then identify this is what I'm doing now. This is what I need to do to move forward. So just trying to build student agency into the learning.

Monique Miller: Fantastic.

Dale Atkinson: As we record this, we're towards the latter half of the third term. So we've just had the NAPLAN data come back. We've just finished the phonics check for the year ones.

How's the data and information from those sources being used to kind of inform the broader practice across this area?

Deb O'Neill: Within our writing action in our site improvement plan. We've also had a strong emphasis on phonemic awareness and the teaching of phonics in [00:09:00] the junior primary, and also the teaching of spelling from reception to year seven.

So we've engaged with a whole school approach to spelling as well as, um, a junior primary phonics assessment. So our data so far has seen a huge increase in our achievement of phonics, where we have the majority of our students scoring well above benchmark in phonics. So scoring in 37, 38 39 achievement.

We also have seen a huge increase in our NAPLAN higher bands, achievement across years, three, five, and seven. I think a really important aspect of our plan and our planning processes that it is not a stagnant plan. It doesn't sit in my office. For example, the smart spelling we identified last year, that our spelling achievement wasn't great across the school.

So we really put a lot of effort and time. And as Kane mentioned, a lot of resourcing into skilling up our teachers in that area. We are seeing the results in [00:10:00] our NAPLAN achievement for 2021 with an increase from years, three, five, and seven, and also a higher band retention. In fact, a growth from years five to seven in higher band.

Dale Atkinson: I mean, that's so encouraging and motivating in many respects, isn't it. To be able to see the numbers. Reflecting the hard work.

Deb O'Neill: And it's also a really good point of celebration because our teachers engage with our plan. We're all on the same track. We all know what our goals are and what our achievement is. We now can go to staff and say, wow, look at what we've done. You know, this is amazing. And the students, as Kane said, the students are involved in assessing and evaluating their own achievement and setting their next steps in learning.

Monique Miller: You've already been looking at NAPLAN data, and I believe you're having regular check-ins and getting feedback as teachers about where to next. And what are your next goals?

Deb O'Neill: So we've [00:11:00] done an analysis of the aspects of writing from NAPLAN and identified that our spelling has increased, we still need a little bit of work on our cohesion. So that then is going to be the next step for us to analyse the different aspects of the writing data that we've got and develop some plans around, okay, is that, is that across the board? Is that a consistent area for development and is it reflected also in our Brightpath assessment? So we don't just look at one data source. We look at a few data sources and then say, well, what do we need to do as a school to move that on.

Kane Watkins:I would potentially just add to that as well, that where the NAPLAN is more sort of a, I think we use it more as a sort of a summative assessment tool. Um, and that's really what have we done really well. And now what are the areas that we need to sort of look to, um, improving the Brightpath tool is, um, probably more a formative assessment tool and that's ongoing. And that actually informs the pedagogy that's going on in the classroom as well, highly [00:12:00] individualised for each student which is fantastic.

Monique Miller: Have you been using any of the literacy guidebooks to support with your...

Kane Watkins:Yes. So I can talk to that a little bit as well. So our reading program in year seven, and I know it's used across the site as well, we've taken a lot of the pedagogy that's actually explored in the literacy guidebooks and applied that to the day-to-day interactions in the classroom.

So an example of that would be in reading. We have started using book club circles where there's again, high level of student agency, student led discussion. And the teacher really is sort of a facilitator in that group. Those conversations that the students are having between one another is another form of formative assessment where, um, you're able to sort of check in and see where are the understandings relative to this particular text and what can I do next to move this learning forward? What are some questions I could potentially ask to prompt student thinking a little bit further?

Deb O'Neill: Our teachers in the early years use the literacy [00:13:00] and numeracy continuum and to make that explicit with the children to change it into students speak, but to use it as I guess, setting goals.

So bump it up walls in a sense, but also for students to actually see the progression of their learning as they go. With the literacy and numeracy guidebooks we also use um, the high impact teaching strategies and so really important aspects of formative assessment. Uh, differentiation we've looked at at a whole site. So how do we challenge and stretch every learner at our school is I guess a little bit of our mantra.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, I guess the flexibility that sits within those resources to kind of take them off the shelf and plug aspects of them depending on the nature of issues that you're trying to deal with at a local level is reasonably useful too.

Kane Watkins:Absolutely. Yeah.

Dale Atkinson: So you've had a school improvement plan in place, Deb, since 2019. What would you say you've learnt and how's it evolving? What are, what are you planning to [00:14:00] do differently into the future?

Deb O'Neill: What I've learnt about improvement planning is that it needs to be really detailed. It needs to be student focused. So the success criteria needs to be what we would see students doing and that, that is developed and written by teachers. So in our next plan, we start with what our success criteria would look like. And then we work backwards from that. So, um, what we would see students doing, doing so therefore, what actions do we need to do based on analysing our current data to make that into a reality.

So we're just about to start our improvement planning process for the next three years. We've done a whole school reflection on our plan. We've identified some areas that we need further investigation in. One of them is numeracy, for example, in the early years. And so then we'll start working on how are we going to achieve that? What resources do we need to put in place? What training do we need for [00:15:00] teachers? And also how we share that with our community.

Monique Miller: Do you have any advice for teachers, schools and leaders when approaching their school improvement plan?

Kane Watkins:Yep. It needs to be a whole-school approach. So you need to work as, as a whole school community, but you need those professional conversations happening at sort of the grassroots level between teachers, but also with students.

I think that it sort of needs to be a cultural shift towards working together as a team and breaking down traditional barriers of working in isolation from one another. Not that that's here, but, um, If I were to give advice to any school, it would be that just embrace working as part of a team and, and, you know, sharing your ideas.

Deb O'Neill: I think any planning needs to be really refined and it needs to be simple. Like it doesn't need to include every single thing you do. You actually need to choose a couple of actions and do them well. And you'll see the spinoff. And then the continual looking at that, refining it, adding new things as it [00:16:00] progresses, um, is important.

So. Writing our plan when we wrote it in 2019, looks very different to our plan now. Our challenge of practice is still the same. However, our actions have actually become quite refined and quite targeted that way we can celebrate, because we actually know that we've achieved what we set out to do.

Dale Atkinson: It's been a great discussion and I think the thing that's really coming through for me is the focus around the planning that sits across sort of a cascade from, from a whole of site-based, um, kind of thing to a year level to individual classrooms and then laterally up and down. And it, it seems to be something that you've managed to get the whole kind of teaching community to buy into and the leadership to buy into.

And it's, um, it's really impressive.

Kane Watkins:It's a cultural thing.

Deb O'Neill: And what I'd like to see is us involving the students more in that. So bringing them to the table in the planning process and having them identify aspects of learning that we need [00:17:00] to improve on as a site and understanding what we're doing and why we're doing it. So that is our, I think our next step.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah. So the journey continues.

Deb O'Neill: Yeah, absolutely, never stops.

Dale Atkinson: That's great. Um, thank you very much to Deb and Kane for your time today and for letting us see your wonderful school. So keep it up, I think is the message. It sounds really encouraging. Um, so thanks for your time.

Deb O'Neill: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

Dale Atkinson: As we know from the last couple of years, September is school improvement month at the Department for Education. Our intranet EDi has a lot of helpful resources and they've been built because we've gone into classrooms across the state to show you how school improvement is being rolled out in schools from Barmera to Eudunda, there's planning, handbooks, and templates, literacy, and numeracy guidebooks, and tips on how to use the improvement dashboard and achievement profiles.