Innovation in the Classroom

One of the big changes for me moving from my last school to St Francis of Assisi has been the amount of time I spend in my car travelling to and from work.

I have found a way to spend the time - listening to podcasts!

I came across this podcast - an interview with Dr Tony Wagner and as I listened to it I couldn't help thinking that this would be great for our community to listen to as we start to think about the vision we will have for our school and our students.

Dr. Wagner tells how teachers must change the way they view education in order to help students ready themselves for the careers of tomorrow.

You can listen to the whole podcast here.

Here are some of the ideas...

Dr Wagner talks about schools that are involved in a deeper learning initiative. We no longer live in a knowledge economy - we live in the innovation era and what does this mean for our students today?

There is no longer a competitive advantage to knowing more than the person next to you.

The world doesn't care about what you know - but cares about what you can do with what you know.

Those who are most likely to succeed are not those good at school and managed to get diplomas or degrees - the future will demand a very different set of skills and dispositions.

Children are going to need to: (this list is not exhaustive)

- learn through trial and error
- learn to take risks
- create
- communicate
- collaborate
- think critically

"It's an entirely different set of habits and dispositions. It's not skills instead of knowledge - Knowledge matters - academic content matters. That's the easy part. Skills matter more than academic content." 

And intrinsic motivation matters most - if you are intrinsically motivated you will continuously acquire new skills and the content knowledge you will need to succeed.


There is a challenge here to get people to understand our changing world, to have a different vision, we are living in the midst of the change and therefore it is hard sometimes for people to see past what they know. 

How do we shift that culture of "it worked for me and it should work for them?"

Dr Tony Wagner was involved in the creation of the film "Most Likely to Succeed."  one of the purposes of this movie was to create discussion around this topic - How the world has changed and what should be the education priorities around this change?

We need to be innovative, but innovative with good research behind us. We need to encourage our teaching staff to do the research and trial different innovative ideas.

Support this innovation with a budget. Work together to create these new practices. Encourage our staff to work collaboratively - isolation is the enemy of innovation. We need to encourage teams of teachers to work together to and take risks.

What does this mean for us at St Francis of Assisi Catholic School?

- We are challenged to share information about our changing world with our parent community
- We are challenged to have a good evidence based rationale for what we are doing 
- We are challenged to share research and evidence with our parent community
- We need to visit other schools that are on the same path as we are and unpack what they are doing that takes learning deeper
- We are challenged to evaluate our programmes in order to ensure that we are taking learning deeper.


Jo Earl

Teacher Only Days - Lead up to Day One.

Welcome to the school blog where you can read about our journey as we enter into this exciting time. 

Over the last couple of weeks the teachers and support staff have been working really hard to set up programmes that will challenge and excite our students.

This week we had three Teacher Only Days working collaboratively, learning together. 

On Day one we spent time looking at how we work in the workplace, at the makeup of our teaching teams, the similarities and differences between us and how we will work together to most effectively raise the achievement of the students we are working with. Lois Christmas, an education consultant facilitated this excellent session.

We had our first session on Growth mindset. We worked together to gain a good understanding of Growth mindset and to begin to develop a shared language that will promote Growth mindset in our students. We intend to share this information on Growth mindset with you soon on the website and in a parent information session later in the year. in the meantime here is short video to watch if you are interest in hearing more and a link to a short article.

Carol Dweck - The Power of Yet

On Day two our Director of Religious Studies (DRS) Suzanne Newton facilitated an excellent session that had us looking at our Charism (The charism refers to the distinct spirit that animates our community and gives it a particular character). We also discussed what best practice looks like in the delivery of RE. Teams spent time together planning the first RE integrated unit. Cushla O'connor (Primary RE Advisor) joined us for the morning also which was much appreciated.


Our afternoon was spent looking at Teaching as Inquiry and revisiting the Spirals of inquiry - talking about delving into our practice and really drilling down to find out what the data we collect is telling us about teaching and learning - and how we can improve student outcomes using this process.


We finished the day with some art workshops...check out this pic of our wonderful art!!

Day three started with the whole teaching and support staff team attending Mass together at 9.15am. This was a wonderful way to start the day and we were welcomed fully by Father Simon and Father Mathew at this Mass. They along with Kirsten from the parish office joined us for morning tea - which they provided! We know we are going to work so well together to ensure the spiritual guidance of your children is well covered!


After morning tea we had a session on blogging - Team blogs were set up and this is going to be one of the main ways each team will communicate with you this year. More information and links to follow - Watch this space.


What a wonderful three days... all we need now is some students!!!! Bring on Day One!