Welcome

Welcome to our blog to support our presentation "Levelling the Playing Field in the Middle School" at the Expanding Learning Horizons Conference (Lorne, August 2013)

A little bit about us...

Our program

Our students come from a large number of feeder schools which results in a diverse range of skill levels in the use of technology. To ensure a level playing field for our students Year 8 students (and from next year, Year 9 students as well) participate in a school created subject known as  ReTech, short for Research and Technology.

ReTech is for one lesson a week which gives us the opportunity to ensure that all students are taught basic skills and techniques.  Our school runs a middle school program where students are divided into learning groups and have one teacher for Integrated Studies (English \ History \ SOSE \ Religion) and one teacher for Maths\Science (other subjects are stand alone).  Realistically, the one timetabled lesson is not enough time to ensure that the students fully retain everything they are taught which means that reinforcement of the skills taught in ReTech needs to happen across the curriculum in all subjects.  The other crucial part of our program is a staff development program, iLearn2. This program is offered to all staff across the school and is offered through a number of workshop offerings or at the request of Curriculum Leaders \ teams \ individual teachers.

Each term we have a different focus which has been planned with the teachers to ensure that skills are taught on a "just in time" basis where possible. Flexibility is a crucial part of this process and sometimes things are moved around to meet the curriculum (Don't you wish school life was as easily compartmentalised as this website seems to make it)

• Term 1 - iConnect
• Term 2 - iResearch
• Term 3 - iCollaborate
• Term 4 - iCreate
• iLearn2 is available on a needs basis throughout the year, although some units gain popularity as word spreads throughout the teachers.