At school, the practices that support student wellbeing involve creating a safe environment; ensuring connectedness; engaging students in their learning; and promoting social and emotional skills.
Teachers can view School Discoveries showcasing good practice in supporting student wellbeing in the context of the HSC minimum standard.
Narrator:
New South Wales high schools are using several tools and strategies to develop students’ literacy and numeracy skills. These will support students’ preparation for the HSC minimum standard online tests.
St Marys Senior High School has 900 students in Years 11 and 12, and has a leading and learning team dedicated to the HSC minimum standard. This team consists of staff from each key learning area.
They use Google Classroom to support test administration, and communicate with students and staff about the HSC minimum standard.
As part of the team, an additional part-time Learning and Support Teacher facilitates the test administration, monitors student progress and works with teachers to develop literacy and numeracy resources targeted to student needs.
A shared Google Drive folder is used to communicate identified student literacy and numeracy needs with teachers, along with appropriate teaching activities to support their students.
Targeted activities are also available for students to access through Google Classroom and complete as they need.
Progress is logged into the shared Google Drive folder, so all class teachers can see which resource has been used, by which student. The teaching team use this feedback along with a range of data to help decide when a student is ready to sit the tests.
Students are informed of their test schedule through Google Classroom, ensuring an inclusive approach.
In this way, student well-being is considered as test administration and results are private and not obvious to other students.
This is a very personalised approach to the administration of the HSC minimum standard tests.
It also gives students ownership for their own learning and progress.
[End of transcript]
Narrator:
New South Wales high schools are using several tools and strategies to develop students’ literacy and numeracy skills. These will support students’ preparation for the HSC minimum standard online tests.
At Riverside Girls High School, conversations between a student and a teacher about learning are a way of managing student anxiety about the online tests.
Students are given the knowledge of how to grow their literacy and numeracy skills.
Year 7 and 8 classes are given time to reflect on their learning in a learning coach lesson.
The learning coach, introduces the growth mindset model, unpacks assessment criteria, help students to write learning goals, and upload evidence of improvement to student e-learning portfolios.
The pages in these e-learning portfolios are based on the 4 C’s. Creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication.
They include reflection statements about growth and where to next.
In Year 9, all students attend a showcase, ‘Maxi You’, where students are shown data that is collected as they progress through high school.
The aim is to normalise data as a snapshot of information and to discuss how it can be used to maximize individual potential.
Teachers then continue to use data to inform the next steps of learning with their classes, monitoring growth and rewarding progress.
Students have become used to conversations about improvement.
Celebrating small gains and monitoring growth. They have shown little anxiety in approaching the HSC minimum standard online tests.
[End of transcript]
Narrator:
New South Wales high schools are using several tools and strategies to develop students’ literacy and numeracy skills. These will support students’ preparation for the HSC minimum standard online tests.
Newtown High School of the Performing Arts has introduced personalised learning conversations in Stages 4 and 5 to prepare students to manage any anxiety about the HSC minimum standard tests.
These conversations build grit, persistence and goal orientation.
Teaching students to take responsibility for their own learning through the achievement of learning goals is a strategy used to achieve the school target of all students obtaining a Higher School Certificate.
The key support for students is through the school philosophy of improving through mistakes and it’s emphasis on student responsibility for improvement.
Every student in Years 9 to 12 is taught to ask key questions about their learning.
Staff are trained in conducting coaching conversations, how to write SMART goals and how to use the language of growth.
Each Year 9 and 10 student meets with the teacher-coach 8 times a year.
Just before report time, students bring evidence to the session to show their progress.
The HSC minimum standard tests are communicated to students as part of the goal-setting expectation.
The tests are according to the deputy principal a snapshot of where their literacy and numeracy skills are on the day and a really good way of checking that the students in Year 10 are on track to achieve their literacy and numeracy goals.
After this, students write a reflection with teachers and parents as the audience.
It is this non-faculty based report that is most valued by teachers, parents and students themselves.
Students feel they are known, valued and cared for and that the HSC minimum standard is simply part of a process and achievable.
[End of transcript]