Visiting teachers meet in spirit of collaboration, connection

Visiting teachers travelled from just out of Sydney to Narrabri West Public School in the spirit of collaboration and connection last week and in the hope of learning what makes Narrabri West’s formative assessment so effective.

The meeting of educators was headed by Narrabri West Public School and The Oaks Public School principals, Tania Nichols, and Suzanne Bowyer, who made the drive with three of her teachers for three days of learning and discussing future endeavours.

The principals’ professional friendship spanning 12 years was started through an educational collaboration between schools in Sydney and the north west region and when Suzanne Bowyer stepped into her role as principal at The Oaks Public School, she knew that she wanted to bring the expertise of the Narrabri West leadership team to her new school.

“Narrabri West is at the forefront of formative assessment, and we hope to bring some of the same expertise and knowledge to our curriculum,” said Mrs Bowyer.

This time it was three teachers from Oaks Public School in Sydney who made the drive to Narrabri West Public School for an anticipated catchup and group-learning experience, but future hopes are that the schools will work closely together to provide support.

New to the agenda this year was a potential teacher-exchange program; a passion project where teachers from participating schools can swap classrooms, help each other out, and learn from the different city/regional environments of the schools.

Mrs Nichols was also looking forward to the opportunities collaborating with The Oaks Public School would bring for her teachers.

“Oaks School has a great system for parent communication, and we would love to see how they implement different technologies into the student’s learning experience,” said Mrs Nichols.

Over three days the group of teachers spent time exploring Narrabri West’s facilities, liaising with students, talking about leadership, and exchanging knowledge on the formative assessment structure.

Mrs Bowyer expressed great admiration for the way that assessment and curriculum at Narrabri West were embedded in classroom settings and how students took a “hands-on” responsibility for their learning goals.

“During our student liaison session, we met a Year 5 student who had just started at the school, and even in a matter of a few weeks he was able to articulate his learning goals and talk about his progress at the school,” said Mrs Bowyer.

Mrs Nichols said that the classroom’s learning facilities played an important part in the effectiveness of their teaching and learning strategies.

“Our learning goals are the focus of every lesson and displayed on the learning walls, along with success criteria, anchor charts and learning journals, and we celebrate when students meet their goals.

“We take an evidence and data-driven approach to our learning, and we don’t shy away from including the children in the professional dialogue of what is required for assessment.

“We start to teach the explicit language as students start Kindy, so they learn to articulate their learning steps from there and understand exactly what learning is happening in the classroom.

Mrs Nichols, who has been at Narrabri West Public for 33 years said she never looked elsewhere since taking on her teaching journey at the school because of the fantastic
environment for teachers and students that is embedded in the culture.

“We have a wonderfully supportive environment for the teachers, and a lovely community around the school. I feel very fortunate to work alongside these brilliant educators and I cannot wait to see what our future collaboration with The Oaks School brings,” said Mrs Nichols.