High Impact Teaching Strategies

Examples tHAT illustrate the Strategy

Example 1: Year 8 – Health and Physical Education

The Health and Physical Education (HPE) team at a Melbourne secondary school invited the Professional Learning Coordinator to their team meeting to discuss using goal setting and success criteria for the upcoming Year 8 Dance Unit. The team wanted to ensure students developed the required knowledge, understanding and skills identified in the achievement standard. Discussion during the meeting underlined the importance of providing students with clear learning intentions, success criteria and a common assessment language. The team decided to create a unit plan that included a proficiency scale for the unit, with clear learning intentions and success criteria for each lesson in the unit. At the start of the dance unit teachers presented their students with a unit overview and provided them with opportunities to demonstrate their current knowledge and skills on a proficiency scale. Students were also introduced to the unit’s learning intentions and success criteria so they could self-monitor their progress throughout the unit. At the end of the dance unit, students reviewed the proficiency scales, and self and peer-assessed their gains in knowledge and skills. Teachers supported individual students to identify their strengths and areas for improvement, and to set new learning goals. HPE teachers collected the data and used it for overall student assessment, and to support reflection on the impact of their teaching practice. Using proficiency scales allowed students and teachers to recognise prior learning levels and created opportunities to reflect on student growth in engagement and academic outcomes. Consistently articulating learning intentions and success criteria allowed teachers to set challenges that fostered student commitment to learning, and built their confidence in attaining the learning intentions.