Engaging students

Here an early childhood teacher models innovative practice and explores new ways to engage students in school learning. Inquiry-based approaches are being implemented across the school with teachers making learning goals specific and communicating these to students. There is a focus on strategies to enhance students’ comprehension of information texts, working from students’ interests to achieve key curriculum goals in literacy and numeracy.

In her own class, the focus teacher uses students’ ‘real life’ experiences with garden tools into the classroom to make learning purposeful. From this innovative platform, she builds students’ literacy knowledge and skills and engages students in reading, talking about and writing non-fiction texts. She has precise learning intentions for individuals and the class and analyses learning to plan explicit interventions for individual students, based on the driving topic of ‘Tools’ and their literacy learning needs.