THRIVE… don’t survive!
Nicole Walker Head of Year 11 Navigating the journey of school certainly does have its challenges, its twists and turns. Learning is varied, dynamic and often fast-paced. Pedagogy is guided by research and supports students to learn and succeed as they engage with the curriculum. Explicit teaching enhances students’ learning outcomes and their grasp of concepts, which deepen their insights and ability to transfer knowledge. Visible learning strategies, such as articulating and displaying learning intentions at the start of each lesson, aid students to learn concepts deeply and engage quickly with content being covered to ’make connections across ideas’ (Hattie 2012, p. 16). Classrooms are certainly exciting places to be!
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Queensland’s new senior assessment system requires teachers to guide students in new ways. Likewise, students are required to process information differently and retain knowledge from two sequential units of work over a twelve-month period. External exams require students to demonstrate syllabus objectives and a deep understanding of subject matter, and this contributes up to 50 per cent of their overall result for subjects. Observations, reflections and feedback from students have inspired an exploration into applying an explicit teaching of social and emotional skills to support students in this ‘high-
stakes’ context so they can function calmly and confidently as information is analysed and synthesised. Similar to the sharing of learning intentions, it has been exciting to witness students growing in confidence as they become increasingly cognisant not only of the ‘how’ but of the ‘why’ strategies are useful. This is echoed by educator and author Ron Ritchhart who believes that ’the extent that students can develop a greater awareness of thinking processes, they become more independent learners capable of directing and managing their own cognitive actions’ (2011, p. 22). The strategies below have been shared with groups of current senior students, and the results indicate that they feel increasingly confident and calm prior to and during exam situations. They can function well. •
Teach students how their brains work. Psychologist Andrew Fuller believes that as students understand their thinking more and what is happening in their brain, they are empowered to realised that some thoughts are unhelpful/fleeting and should not be retained, and that anxiety inhibits memory function (Fuller 2022).
