1. Wilmot Road Primary School, Shepparton, Victoria
Goulburn Valley, Victoria
Wilmot Road Primary School, Shepparton, Victoria
The 4Ps: Professional Learning, Personalisation, Precision & Partnerships
(Reference to Fullan’s 3Ps)
Jenny
Welcome everyone to our workshop.
I’m Jenny Manuel – I’m the principal at WRPS in Shepparton, Victoria.
With me today is Simone Higgins– our Assistant Principal and Sharon Thompson our 2011 Literacy Leading Teacher and now coach
Over the last 2 years we have had an equal focus on Literacy & Numeracy at WRPS.
We’d like to showcase the leadership directions we have undertaken and what that looks like on the ground in classrooms and programs across our school through the 4 Ps of Personalisation, Precision, Professional Learning and Partnerships.

2. School Context – firstly a school snapshot....
Jenny
School Context – firstly a school snapshot....
Wilmot Rd. Primary School is situated in the south of Shepparton in the Goulburn Valley (approximately 2 ½ hours north of Melbourne). The school currently has 255 students from diverse multicultural, indigenous and low socio-economic backgrounds.
62% of families come from language backgrounds other than English: mainly Middle Eastern countries. We have an increasing number of refugee families and also service a community where children have been born in Australia, yet enter school with very little English.
Our Student Family Occupation Index continues to grow each year and is currently at This means we are one of the most disadvantaged schools in the state.
Along with 2 of our neighbouring schools – Gowrie St and St Georges Rd Primary school we have worked collaboratively in our Literacy and Numeracy improvement agenda. We refer to ourselves as the Shepparton Neighbourhood of Schools.

3. A multi-faceted approach to improvement through....
Professional Learning
Personalisation
Precision
Partnerships
Jenny
The Victorian agenda for improvement has been a multi-faceted approach focusing on capacity building of leadership & teachers, student centred intervention, effective use of data and family engagement.
We applied each of these focus areas to our neighbourhood agenda. We believe that we can accelerate the improvement in each of our schools if we work systematically and collectively, harnessing the collective power and skills in our schools.
We hope to provide a brief insight into how we have approached improvement under each of these areas.

4. Professional Learning...
a connected approach...
Connected Leadership Model
Time for professional conversation &
planning
Strengthened Curriculum
Leadership roles &
responsibilities
Simone- We needed to make sure we had a framework that facilitated professional growth and interaction, to ensure that everyone on the bus knew where we they were headed, providing a personalised curriculum to meet the needs of all students.
Connected Leadership Model –Literacy and Numeracy PLTs are conducted and led by a team of 4 to 5 Literacy and Numeracy leaders each week. Our Literacy and Numeracy Leaders plan the focus of our PLTs based upon our Neighbourhood work with Dr John Munro, who joins us each term for 3 days of professional learning and modelling of strategies. Our Focused Learning Walks also inform the future work we need to attend to as a school.
Professional interactions - Along with dedicated weekly PLT’s, we focus most of our PL sessions again on Literacy and Numeracy. Staff have dedicated time to discuss and reflect on student learning in teams. This gives ownership for the learning of all students for all staff.
Our teachers have permission to focus on Literacy for 2 hours and Numeracy 1.5 hours daily. The crowded curriculum has been eliminated as all other strands are integrated.

5. Professional Learning Focus;
Develops our staff skills sharing best practise
School PLTs are “energised” by our Neighbourhood PLTs & PD with John Munro
PLT focus:
Planned use of Class Profiles & analysis of data at each PLT
Coaching:
Dedicated modelling, co-teaching and reflection sessions
ES PLT
Focused Learning Walks:
Whole school alignment
Simone- We see the difference between Professional Learning and PLTs as Professional Learning being where we are upskilling our staff, sharing of resources and strategies, and a Professional Learning Team is where we have data on the table – individual student data from an assessment or a class profile and we are discussing the students strengths, what they can do and what the next level of instruction is needed to personalise the learning.
Both have strong impacts on building the capacity of leadership and teachers ensuring a whole school approach and alignment.
Our sessions with Dr John Munro, Melbourne University have developed a collective capacity with shared understandings, language and skills around the High Reliability Literacy Teaching Practises for all staff.
Coaching classroom teachers – time is dedicated to practices such as in-class modelling, team teaching, observation and feedback - our Coaching Team has now expanded to the leadership teams from within the school making this model sustainable.
Training small teams of Education Support staff through regular dedicated and planned ES PLT’s to assist in classrooms with effective strategies in both literacy and numeracy. ES staff are also released to plan once per term with Junior teachers for our case study students.
Our Focused Learning Walks have added another dimension to our professional learning informing the next work of PLTs and auditing our professional practise against the work of John Munro.

6. Activity...Professional
Learning...
Think about your current Professional
Learning Practice...How can you move it
to exemplary practice and where
will you move it to in 2012?
Turn and talk for a brief moment about your PL practice and how you can move it to exemplary practice in 2012

7. Personalisation...
Year Profiles provide teachers with pictorial data about every student, based on VELS data for Reading, Writing, Speaking & Listening & Number
On day 1 of the school year every classroom teacher is provided with a year profile of their grade of students based on data from December VELS for the 3 strands of literacy and number for numeracy. Along with this visual they receive a table of reading levels from December benchmarking. Intervention staff and leadership also receive copies of this data. This means that from day one data is available for teachers to analyse and use to inform their planning.
The profile has each student’s name, room number, and any other information for example...DNI funded students.
These profiles assist new staff to put faces to names immediately.

8. Personalisation is...
The profile has continued to evolve from its inception 3 years ago where I used to cut and paste photos onto paper. It is now done electronically with CASES photos and new students have a photo taken upon enrolment so they can be added to the profile.
Originally the profiles were completed for each individual class on a VELS scale but now have been streamlined to cover an entire year level of students and also sees an ESL profile separate to the VELS one. The changes have meant teachers of a year level are able to “own” the whole year level rather than just their class, can have professional dialogue around strategies to use with like students, enable shared planning. They now look at the bigger picture rather than the students they have in their own class. Leadership are able to get a clearer picture of where the students are at across year levels but are also able to distinguish between classrooms. The change to have a separate ESL pathway profile enables the ESL students to be judged fairly – the 2 pathways enable more accurate profiling.
Students are placed into colour bands of:
Blue = above expected level
Green = at expected level
Orange = 6 months below expected level
Red = more than 6 months below expected level
ESL pathway = plotted against the scale eg. A1.1 – A2.3 or BL.1 – B3.3
Profiles are updated after each reporting period – June and December

9. Personalisation is...
Originally the profiles were completed for each individual class on a VELS scale but now have been streamlined to cover an entire year level of students and also sees an ESL profile separate to the VELS one. The changes have meant teachers of a year level are able to “own” the whole year level rather than just their class, can have professional dialogue around strategies to use with like students, enable shared planning. They now look at the bigger picture rather than the students they have in their own class. Leadership are able to get a clearer picture of where the students are at across year levels but are also able to distinguish between classrooms. The change to have a separate ESL pathway profile enables the ESL students to be judged fairly – the 2 pathways enable more accurate profiling.
Teachers use the profiles to differentiate the class learning.
Departments use the profiles to moderate across grade levels and validate assessment and reporting.  
Profiles are updated after each reporting period – June and December

10. Personalisation is... Intervention Co-ordination role Co-teaching
Coaching
Teachers use the profiles to differentiate the class learning.
Departments use the profiles to moderate across grade levels and validate assessment and reporting.
The intervention team uses the profiles to identify students from the “orange” band for strategic intervention. This does not mean we ignore the red band kids, we are targeting those who just need a ‘push’ to get going.

11. Activity...Personalisation...
Turn and Talk:
All schools profile their students
in different ways.
How do you use these profiles to
drive the teaching and learning in
your school?
Briefly turn and talk to the person on the other side of you about how you profile students in your school.

12. Precision is...
...guided by transparent whole school approaches...using an explicit AIP as the framework for accountability...
School Direction
Annual Implementation Plan
Detailed & Specific and aligned to all staff members
Team Direction
Explicit Role Descriptions
Related specifically to team & individual responsibility for the Literacy & Numeracy Improvement agenda
Individual Direction
Staff Performance & Development
Personalised, incorporates AIP Key improvement strategies and Student Case Study data
Our Annual Implementation Plan is an extremely detailed and explicit document and has been a guiding framework for our improvement agenda.
Every key improvement strategy has been aligned against the staff member responsible for its implementation. The relevant sections are linked directly into personalised Performance & Development Plans and these are also supported by another layer – the explicit Role Descriptions.
It is a very transparent and accountable structure that provides clarity and direction for all and is based on teams of teachers working together and being very clear about their particular roles.

13. Precision is... Implementing the 6-18 month Literacy & Numeracy
Strategy
Differentiation of learning in classrooms
Moderation across Departments where we have the
same grade levels in PLT’s
Identification of Intervention students
Staff P&D process – 5 identified students per teacher,
from 6 months below expected level
Current data, student needs, goals,
strategies to support the learning,
termly review built in
Precision occurs through our Performance and Development process...
Term 1: All teaching staff negotiate 5 “Orange Band” / 6month below expected level students with Jenny (Principal) to become part of their focus in the classroom. These students are then “tracked” in P& D Plans in terms of:
Current data- EOL, MOL, On Demand Data, etc
Interventions- Reading Recovery, YALP, Intervention teacher (John Munro), Numeracy, ESL- SELC
Linked to any staff coaching- ie. Literacy coach then choose Literacy focus for students
Setting Goals for learning based upon teaching strategies – eg. Improve Reading Level, developing GKR strategies
Be aware of their 5 students as they plan their weekly learning opportunities.
Term 3 & 4:
Teachers are given filtered data sets of their class where we look at June VELS, NAPLAN, On Demand March & September comparison differences, NFA comparisons, etc.
ESL Pathways, DnI, Idenified 5 students are also identified.
Review student progress with me Jenny. CRT release and 1 /2 hour meetings in a dedicated time.

14. Precision is...Case Study Students to...
Engage teachers in data
Accelerate student achievements
Jenny
The Student Case Study Model has 2 aims –firstly, engaging teachers in data to closely monitor student progress, and secondly to accelerate student achievement – particularly with those students performing just below expected levels.
The model implemented over the last 2 years involves:
5 students, performing just below expected levels being indentified in every classroom. With specific interventions we expected to accelerate their progress by more than the 0.5 expected level in one academic year.
At PLTs case study student data is analysed and teachers discuss strategies of how to move student forward
Our aim with our Case Study students is for teachers to know in greater depth the nuances of each student, where the their learning gaps are, what the next incremental target is and what additional teaching is required to make the difference.

15. Activity...Precision...
How do you identify, monitor and track students who are 6 months below the expected level at your school?
Take a moment to reflect on your school’s practice.

16. Family Liaison Officers
Partnerships...
Family Liaison Officers
3 Family Liaison Officers – Arabic, Afghani & Koori
Building connections between home and school
Developing common understandings
Shared Neighbourhood Resource
Simone
Family and community engagement has been enhanced by the appointment of Family Liaison officers representing our largest cultural groups across Shepparton Neighbourhood schools – Arabic, Afghani and Koori.
There are several challenges around engaging with members of our cultural groups - such as the most obvious, the communication barriers. Many parents have not accessed an education in their homelands and so- face to face, direct contact is essential. There is a reservedness about coming into the school and for some it is quite overwhelming. Other families believe the school is the professional organisation responsible for educating their children and haven’t yet come to value the partnership responsibility. Developing a culture of High expectations for student achievement is an ongoing challenge!
Our FLO’s work with us to build these relationships and develop understandings.
Netbook program- technology into hands of most disadvantaged- newsletter home, photo stories of reading together at home.

17. Activity...Partnerships...
Turn and Talk about the different partnerships you have and how you use these to enhance student outcomes...
For the final time, turn and talk about the different partnerships you have and how you use these to enhance the learning and outcomes for your students and families.

18. Has the data changed?
On Demand March – September expected growth is 0.25 of a VELS level.
The graphs show how our on demand school data has changed from 2010 to 2011.
The vertical axis shows the growth in VELS level .
The horizontal axis shows the year levels in 2010 and 2011.
The blue column represents each grade level’s results in The purple column represents each grade level’s results in 2011.
The growth in number from March to September for grade 3 in 2010 was 0.3, in 2011 the growth was 0.7 You can see that our grade 6 growth in 2011 was far lower than in 2010 but if you follow the cohort across the growth for this group in 2010 was 0.23 and in 2011 it was 0.33 – so growth is still occurring.
Our grade 3 cohort in 2011’s growth was amazing – 0.7, nearly 3 times the expected rate, similarly our grade 6 in 2010 was 0.68

19. Has the data changed?
In reading our growth across the board was once again above the expected rate except for grade 6. This has been acknowledged and is a piece we continue to work on.

20. Contact Details... Jenny Manuel – Principal
Simone Higgins – Assistant Principal
Sharon Thompson – Literacy/Numeracy Coach
Wilmot Road Primary School
Thanks for your active listening. We will be around for the next few minutes if you would like to ask us any questions.