1.  Know Yourself  Choose Yourself  Give Yourself

2. Melrose Primary School 300 kms from Melbourne on Victorian/New South Wales Border 320 children enrolled SFO.68 60% of our families receive EMA 27 Koorie children 5 ESL children 35 children from Defence Force families Stability rate of 63%

3. We are dedicated to achieving academic success and emotional wellbeing for our students. We believe emotional intelligence is the foundation from which children develop their education. We constantly strive to improve learning outcomes for all students to equip them with the skills to become active engaged citizens of the 21 st Century. The improvement of literacy and numeracy outcomes through high expectations and focused explicit teaching continues to be a priority for our school. Technology is being embedded into our teaching and learning programs. We are passionately committed to enhanced student engagement and connectedness to school. OUR PURPOSE:

4. Our EQ Journey EQ journey began in 2005.  We began our journey with the belief that academic success is only one part of being a successful student.  We believe that in order to be successful academically we must be both aware of and in control of our emotions. EQ underpins everything we do and every interaction we have within our school community

5. Surveys  What the Opinion Surveys are saying about our school.

6. KEY IMPROVEMENT STRATEGIES FOR STUDENT LEARNING: Build teacher efficacy and capacity to plan and deliver explicit, focused teaching and provide effective and targeted feedback to students. Build students’ self-belief to have high expectations of themselves as learners. Build collective accountability for the assessment and monitoring of progress of individual students, cohorts of students and the school as a whole. Continue to develop partnerships with parents and support them to hold high aspirations for their children.

7. Accountability Collective Ownership Build collective accountability for the assessment and monitoring of progress of individual students, cohorts of students and the school as a whole. The black book, cohort and individual learning plans.  You will have noticed from the video our emphasis on personalising the data with photos of all our children showing their development in number, reading and writing. Data is triangulated with teacher judgments and other types of formative assessment and NAPLAN.  This occurs on a regular basis at both staff, team, PLTs and meetings with paraprofessionals.

8. 8 Numeracy

9. Engagement Engagement  Data is used to determine what a student needs to be taught next on their mathematical journey.  Activities are planned in a sequential manner that moves the student from the concrete through the representational phase to the abstract.  Sustaining student engagement has been pivotal to student success.

10. Environment.  Creating a learning environment where staff and students use the same language to discuss their mathematical experiences has been a key goal which we have achieved through explicit instruction.  At Melrose we have worked hard over the past couple of years to change the attitude that students have towards Mathematics.  We have strived to ensure that the numeracy block is a positive experience and one that enables students to see the relevance to their lives.

11. Environment  Our future challenge in the coming year is to engage our parent community and to foster a more positive attitude and build an awareness that today’s students need to be numerate to succeed. 11

12. Expectations  Teachers set high but realistic goals for each student based on a triangulation of data which is continually updated throughout the year.  Groupings for fluency tasks based on the Numeracy Fluency Assessment are fluid and allow for students who achieve their next goal to be moved into another group.  The goals are clearly articulated to the students and reviewed through their work in E.Q. 12

13. Expectations  Having students set goals in Mathematics is in its infancy at Melrose Primary.  Providing students with meaningful feedback is a major focus of our new strategic plan.  We will be drawing on the work of John Hattie and Geoff Perry to build our teachers’ ability to assist students to set high expectations of themselves as learners, through providing effective and targeted feedback to students. 13

14. Every teacher is an intervention teacher, as we all have students ‘ at risk ’ in our classrooms.  Melrose was part of a pilot program within the Hume Region where a term of intervention training was offered to classroom teachers  During the ten weeks each teacher ran a case study student. They filmed their interactions with the student, as they implemented key aspects of the training and brought the video back for analysis with a peer.

15. Intervention  This has been a highly successful program in changing how teachers scaffold student learning within the classroom.  To date twelve of our staff have been trained, either through the program offered by Hume Region or through our numeracy coach in-house.  We hope to train a further two teachers in 2012 when Hume offers the program again in Term 2 and 3.  We have found that the strategies teachers acquire during their intervention training are being incorporated into their daily classroom practice. 15

16. 16 ICT

17.  ICT is more than just using a computer  For example: ◦ Podcasting, across multi-age groupings, which includes students, teaching and ES staff. ◦ Robotics ◦ Interactive whiteboards ◦ Flip cameras. Embedding ICT into Numeracy and Literacy

18. Beyond computers  Interactive whiteboards are used for a variety of purposes including for example: visual thinking & design.  Using interactive media to assist students make the transition from the concrete to abstract thinking.  The transitional phase of part models and representational thinking can be modeled using ICT. 18

19. 19 Exploring and embedding ICT in daily classroom practice  Exploring rich tasks using ICT to enable students to collaborate and communicate with each other in a safe and productive online medium.  Enhancing literacy and numeracy skills through innovative applications.

20. 20 Ethics and Safety in ICT  Edmodo:  A ‘facebook’ style medium enabling students to access literacy and numeracy activities  Students can contribute and communicate in an online environment where cyber safety is fostered / naturally embedded into the interface.  Relates to their real life encounters with social medias.

21. A MELROSE CHILD 21