Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership Impact Case Study
Leading Literacy
Role-modelling a learning mindset Participants:
Maryanne Moody
Principal, Haddon Primary School
Gaye Carrigan
Assistant Principal, Haddon Primary School
Bastow | Leading Literacy
Maryanne Moody and Gaye Carrigan from Haddon Primary School came away from completing Bastow’s Leading Literacy course with a shared vision for re-engineering their school’s literacy program. As the school’s senior leaders, the pair brought their teaching team along on their journey to create a whole-of-school focus on elevating student literacy outcomes.
The way the course was delivered was particularly constructive and relevant to their real-world school environment. ‘We were immersed in content knowledge, theoretical knowledge, practical knowledge and then created an action plan,’ she says.
Maryanne has been the Principal of Haddon Primary, near Ballarat, for 24 years. Early in her career she completed post-graduate studies in literacy and worked as a literacy consultant. She and Gaye, the Assistant Principal, have over 60 years’ combined experience working in education.
Leaders must also be learners
Even given their extensive experience, both women were open to continuing their own learning so they could actively support a learning culture in their school. They chose to lead by example.
It also ‘sent an extremely powerful and symbolic message’ to her school community that she intends to remain a learner and a leader who will continue to be an instructional resource within the school.
Enrolling themselves in Bastow’s Leading Literacy course in 2014 was a strong demonstration of this commitment. It also highlighted the importance both place on improving literacy outcomes for their 230 students.
‘I may have spent six years working as a literacy consultant and know a heck of a lot in this space, but it’s still important that I continue to test that knowledge and be open to learning,’ Maryanne says.
‘We were determined to review and reconstruct all aspects of teaching literacy in our school,’ says Maryanne. ‘We came back re-energised and motivated. And we had a new road map and strategies for taking literacy to the next level.
Instructional leadership is a strong priority within the Department, especially with the new Framework for Improving Student Outcomes, she explains. ‘So when it comes to professional development like this course, which can provide big inroads into the core teaching and learning areas of literacy and numeracy, it is critical for
Their school-based literacy project has significantly reengineered the instructional model across all year levels. Building teacher capacity around all components of literacy has resulted in a significant shift across the entire school. Teachers are more confident in what and how they are teaching, which is increasing student engagement and learning.
Maryanne has completed several Bastow courses and found that participating in the Leading Literacy course realigned her professional thinking as a school leader.
school principals to participate and be embedded in that professional learning.’ Maryanne was reassured to discover that her accumulated knowledge of literacy education is still relevant. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been in a classroom or was a literacy consultant, and doing this course gave me back my strong curriculum voice,’ she says. ‘Attending a course like this doesn’t always have to be about learning new things; I could read a book to do that,’ she adds, ‘It’s how you learn it, and that’s what was particularly beneficial for us in doing Leading Literacy.’ By completing the course together, Maryanne and Gaye came back to their school with a clear understanding of what needed to change, and the tools and energy to make it happen. ‘And we were fortunate because we didn’t have to do any convincing up the line; we were the ones who were able to make decisions and drive change, in collaboration with our staff,’ says Gaye. ‘It’s important for school leaders to make the time to attend these kinds of courses, because if you’re wanting to affect change in a school it has to come from the top,’ she adds. ‘When staff see someone at our level doing a course such as this, they know that it must be really important.’ Gaye was pleased to be joining her principal on the Leading Literacy course, but admits to arriving at the first group workshop with relatively low expectations. Pictured: Mandy Hipke with student
‘I wasn’t confident I’d be hearing anything new or that would really work in our school context,’ she says. However, after the first session she was ‘absolutely delighted’. ‘I knew straight away that this was something we were really going to get a lot out of,’ she says. ‘And it was great having Maryanne there because we could discuss everything and plan together on the day, on the train trip down and back, or in the car.’
Building teacher confidence and capacity A priority since Maryanne and Gaye began the course has been on building the capacity of the school’s teaching team in all aspects of literacy. ‘Continuing to build the excellence of our teaching practice is one of the school improvement priorities we are focusing on at the moment,’ says Maryanne. ‘We cannot improve student outcomes without first building the capacity of our teachers. ‘Our role as school leaders is to equip them to perform the magic that the students need, and the Leading Literacy program was a very valuable, structured and accessible means by which we were able to do that.’ As they progressed through the 12-month course, Maryanne and Gaye presented fortnightly professional development sessions for their nine classroom teachers, during which they systematically passed on what they were learning at Bastow. They stepped them through the course content and professional reading, and encouraged
Bastow | Leading Literacy
reflective group discussions.
Reading and writing workshops
‘We took our team sequentially through everything we’d learned, making sure each component was embedded back in the classrooms before moving on to the next one,’ explains Maryanne.
Maryanne and Gaye returned to their school confident that the reading and writing workshop structure was the best way forward.
They identified reading as the first area for critical focus. It was an aspect of literacy their team was already confident about, so it was a less threatening area to begin with. ‘In this way, we were able to give our teaching team the confidence to review, reflect, observe, pull apart and put back together our instructional model,’ she says. The elective workshops were also extremely beneficial and were open to any additional staff from participating schools who wanted to attend. ‘This was such a generous and pivotal aspect of the course and we made the most of these opportunities to send our staff to Bastow to grow their understanding around where we were heading,’ says Maryanne. ‘They generated greater understanding and a sense of urgency among our staff about our change program.’ According to Maryanne, one of the most significant impacts arising from their Bastow experience is that there is now a consistent, shared language between herself, Gaye and their teaching team. ‘The whole literacy curriculum is now viable and understood by all,’ she says. The collaborative change process has also created ‘relational trust within the school’, opening up a forum for holding more robust and positive professional conversations.
The new instructional model compartmentalises the school’s teaching of literacy into separate blocks of time for reading workshops and writing workshops. A minimum of two hours each day is devoted to the workshops. ‘The instructional model we were using before was a blurring of both reading and writing throughout the twohour block; this changed our approach to intentional and explicit instruction on reading learning for one hour and then on writing learning for one hour,’ explains Maryanne. To support the new approach they purchased more books to provide every classroom with a reading library of its own, in addition to the school’s central library. ‘It sounds simple, but we hadn’t done that before,’ says Maryanne. ‘There weren’t many books in the classrooms. There were books the teachers taught from, the students’ take-home books, and instructional books, but we no longer had dedicated classroom libraries.’
‘We cannot achieve any improvement in student outcomes without building the capacity of our teachers to deliver those learning outcomes. Our role as school leaders is to equip them to perform the magic that the students need, and the Leading Literacy program was a very valuable, structured and accessible means by which we were able to do that.’ Maryanne Moody
Pictured: Bradley Karslake with student
‘We must always aim high in professional learning. Investing in Bastow’s Leading Literacy program has achieved the desired targeted understanding at our school around literacy and is having a clear impact on the delivery of our school improvement agenda.’ Maryanne Moody Pictured: Louise Kirk with student Bastow | Leading Literacy
Changes are spelling success The approach to teaching spelling was also overhauled. Rather than incorporating spelling into the two-hour literacy block each day, it is now taught as an extra halfhour session outside this block. ‘Before we attended the Bastow course, we weren’t doing spelling very well at all,’ explains Maryanne. ‘We didn’t have a dedicated time during which spelling was the focus, and our teachers weren’t confident in the instruction they were giving.’ Haddon Primary was already performing well in literacy learning when benchmarked against the state average for schools its size. Its students’ 2015 NAPLAN results maintained this level and also indicated a significant improvement in relative growth at Grade 5 level. ‘Within the 12-month period, especially in spelling, the relative growth from Grade 3 to Grade 5 was very high for the majority of our students,’ says Maryanne. The relative growth in the school’s Grade 5 students’ abilities in spelling was in the highest 25% in Australia compared to similar-sized schools, with half the grade qualifying in that category and only one student experiencing low growth. ‘We’re also seeing better results coming through in our early years,’ says Maryanne, although she is quick to say it’s still too early to confidently attribute the improvements to the revised literacy program. ‘There’s no quick fix or silver bullet when it comes to improving literacy outcomes.’ During 2015, the focus was on improving the school’s
instructional models for reading, vocabulary and spelling. In 2016, the team has been overhauling their scaffolded approach to teaching writing. ‘Investing in Bastow’s Leading Literacy course has achieved the desired targeted understanding at our school around literacy and is having a clear impact on the delivery of our school improvement agenda,’ says Maryanne. And in 2017? Once all elements of the literacy program are embedded, Maryanne and Gaye may just move on to Bastow’s Leading Mathematics course.
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