Teacher Staffroom Episode 50

Teacher Staffroom Episode 50:
Teacher planning
This podcast from Teacher is supported by MacKillop Seasons,
whose Seasons for Life project supports schools with loss and
grief following a suicide and other loss event.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Teacher Staffroom, where we

catch you up on the latest evidence, insight, and action. I'm Rebecca
Vukovic.
In today’s podcast we’re going to be talking about teacher planning, drawing on 3 articles
written by educational leader Michael Rosenbrock. In the first article, he looked at how
teachers can pro-actively plan to tackle student misconceptions in STEM. In the second
instalment, he discusses evidence on the importance of deliberately planning to support
students to build and use their vocabulary, and what this could look like in practice. And in the
third piece, published just yesterday, he explores how teachers can best plan to make effective
use of manipulatives and representations to help students build understanding. We’ll be
taking a closer look at each of these articles in the episode, as well as some of the other
highlights from Teacher this month. Let’s jump in.
Let’s start with the first article from Michael Rosenbrock that
explores student misconceptions in STEM . His article draws on the
best available evidence to support maths and science teachers to
effectively plan to address student misconceptions.
Michael says that students bring their existing understandings about the
world to every lesson. In science and mathematics, these self-
constructed ideas do not always align with the concepts, models,
language, and processes used within these disciplines. Commonly
referred to as misconceptions, these can lead to systematic errors that
can build over time and impact further learning. He suggests that pro-
actively planning to address misconceptions is vital to ensuring that
every student develops a strong understanding that they can build on
over time.
After reading the article, make sure you check out the new
resource being developed by Evidence for Learning, that focuses on
putting evidence to work in STEM. I’ll link to it, as well as all the articles
I mention today, in the transcript of this episode on
the Teacher magazine website.
Michael’s second article discusses evidence on the importance of

deliberately planning to support students to build and use their
vocabulary in science and mathematics, and what this could look like
in practice. In the article, Michael poses several questions for educators.
I encourage you to pause this audio now to read the article, and then
come back to consider these questions:
 Where might you find opportunities to collaborate with colleagues to prioritise

key vocabulary to be explicitly taught?
 What approaches will you use to provide students opportunities to proactively
engage with vocabulary and revisit it over time?
 Are there whole-school vocabulary approaches to consider when addressing
vocabulary in your planning?
 How can you ensure that your planning accounts for words which have more
than one meaning which may impact student understanding?
And in the final article in this series on teacher planning, Michael

explores how teachers can best plan to make effective use of
manipulatives and representations to help students build
understanding. In the article, he writes: ‘There are many concepts in
maths and science – such as the multiplication of fractions or the
behaviour of subatomic particles in the atom – that require either
abstract understanding, or relate to a scale or context that is beyond our
experience of reality. To address this, teachers frequently use
manipulatives or representations to support students to build
understanding. Planning to do so effectively can have a positive impact
on student learning’.
After reading the article, here are some questions that Michael poses for
educators to consider:
 Where do you currently use manipulatives and representations to build student

understanding?
 How can you ensure students make connections between them and the concept?
 Where within your planning might it be beneficial to build in opportunities for
students to compare them or consider their limits?
 Are there opportunities for building student capacity to draw on manipulatives
and representations when they get stuck in their learning?
Coming up, we’ll be taking a closer look at some other highlights

from Teacher this month, including a podcast episode with Professor
Anne Castles. But first, here’s a quick message from our sponsor.
Earlier this month, Teacher editor Jo Earp sat down to record a

podcast episode with Professor Anne Castles, Australian
Research Council Laureate Professor at the Australian Centre for the
Advancement of Literacy at the Australian Catholic University. She’s also
a Keynote speaker at ACER’s Research Conference next month in
Sydney. The conference theme is ‘Becoming lifelong learners’ and
presenters will be examining research around how to improve continuity
of learning in the first 12 years of a child’s life. The title of Anne’s
keynote is ‘Ensuring a safety net: Supporting low achievers in school
contexts’. In the episode, Anne talks more about her work, discussing
some of the research on learning to read, and gives listeners a taste of
what delegates can expect from that Research Conference Keynote.
Here’s Anne discussing why learning to read or reading instruction is

such a controversial area of research:
… particularly in primary school, reading is just so prominent. You

know, if a child is struggling with reading then, you know, it's very
evident, it gets in the way of all the other things that they might be
doing in the classroom. And, as a result of that, both parents and
teachers are very, very focused on literacy. And the fact is all children
are different. Some have wonderful skills in maths but might find it
more difficult to learn to read. Others are completely the opposite. But
I think literacy gets a focus because of the fact it's seen as so important
to success in accessing the curriculum and then, down the track, in all
aspects of your life. I mean, if you can't read well that limits you so
much. And I think parents become terribly concerned if they think
their child is falling behind in something that's so important.
The next piece I’d like to tell you about is the latest instalment of our
Teacher’s Bookshelf series, this one features an extract from Building a
World-Class Learning System: Insights from some top-
performing school systems , by Professor Geoff Masters. In this new
publication commissioned by the US National Center on Education and
the Economy (NCEE) Geoff – who is Chief Executive Officer of the
Australian Council for Educational Research – focuses on learning
systems in 5 jurisdictions that have long performed well on the OECD’s
Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. In the book
Geoff explores what the education systems in British Columbia, Estonia,
Finland, Hong Kong and South Korea have in common, the strategies
they employ, and the decisions they are making to support students now
and in the future.
After reading the article on Teacher, consider these questions:
How do you identify individual learner’s needs in your own

school context? What strategies do you employ to address
these needs? Do you monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of
these strategies?
And finally, we launched series 2 of the School Assembly podcast
this month. Jo Earp headed out to Truginina to meet with Jo Camozzato,
who’s the principal of Bemin Secondary College, a new build school that
is set to open its doors to students at the start of the 2024 school year. In
this first episode, they chat about Jo’s experience as an educator, what
led her to school leadership and also what’s happened so far in terms of
the new secondary school.
Here's Jo Camozzato sharing what her proudest achievement has been

so far in this process.
I think the proudest achievement was that 3 weeks ago we had what I
call an informal meet and greet opportunity for the families, and we
really had limited ways to advertise that. We just sort of sent out, you
know, a digital flyer if you like to the local schools, to the local
community centre, we didn’t even have our school Facebook page at
that point. And we were really hopeful that some families would pop
into the local community centre to just meet us to let us know what
part of the world their family originated from, to give us their view on
the uniform pieces we had on display, and it was really great. It was
well over 100 families came in, over a period of 3 or 4 hours – so they
could come when it suited them, before or after dinner – and that made
me feel really excited. And I thought ‘wow this actually worked with
limited publicity’, that there is a word of mouth and people are curious
and interested. So that would probably be the proudest thing.
That's all for this episode, and you’re now all caught up on the latest
evidence, insight and action. Links to all the content and the resources
I’ve mentioned will be in the transcript of this podcast available over at
our website, teachermagazine.com.
Subscribe to our podcast channel wherever you get your podcasts from,
so you can be notified of any new episodes as soon as they land. And, if
you want to keep listening now, you can access the 280+ episodes
already in our archive. And, while you’re there, we’d love if you could
rate and review us.

Teacher Staffroom Episode 50

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Teacher Staffroom Episode 50

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Teacher Staffroom Episode 50

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Teacher Staffroom Episode 50:

Thanks for listening to this episode of Teacher Staffroom, where we

Michael’s second article discusses evidence on the importance of

 Where might you find opportunities to collaborate with colleagues to prioritise

And in the final article in this series on teacher planning, Michael

 Where do you currently use manipulatives and representations to build student

Coming up, we’ll be taking a closer look at some other highlights

Earlier this month, Teacher editor Jo Earp sat down to record a

Here’s Anne discussing why learning to read or reading instruction is

… particularly in primary school, reading is just so prominent. You

After reading the article on Teacher, consider these questions:

How do you identify individual learner’s needs in your own

Here's Jo Camozzato sharing what her proudest achievement has been

You might also like