Teacher coaching – a short reflection on an example of work taking place in WA

By Leith Hogan

I am working with the teachers at Yule Brook College in my role as a Teacher coach for Big Picture, focusing upon Literacy. I have the particular purpose of helping them identify student literacy, the literacy demands of tasks they give students to do, and to find ways of deepening student learning and improving their literacy.

The teachers talk about their work and student work with me and bring examples of it to the conversation. Two literacy support teachers in the school work alongside me to support the conversations and debrief .Our aim is for them, long term, to conduct similar conversations with the Team Leaders, Advisory teachers or pairs of teachers. This is wonderful work!

I thought I might tell you about one of last Tuesday’s conversations at the school.

The year 10 students were asked, within their Science ‘Life and Living’ unit, to use the concept of photo-shop that they had been taught by the Art teacher at the school, to create an image of an animal which had to be made up of a compilation of a fish, mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian. They were then required to write a simple profile of each of the animals that they had used in their image. Their teacher Lane Honda talked to me about this work and I got very excited when I saw the images that the kids had created. I have included one below, for you to see!



Lane had a clear view of where he was going with this project even though it was developing as they went along. He has been teaching ‘Life and living’ as a Science teacher for some time! We talked at length about the purpose of the task, which he thought was related to ‘Where does your made-up animal fit into the animal kingdom?’ I got hung up on the Text analyst role and how this project was leading the kids into a really deep level of thinking and reflection! We threshed this around a bit and decided that the question that Lane really wanted the kids to grapple with was:

“How long will the animal that you have created survive within the habitat that you have placed him in?”

We then thought that a SWOT analysis – using strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities – would really suit this task and lead the kids into the deeper reflection that Lane required for the work. Lane is going back in to try it. I can’t wait to see what happens.

Yule Brook College is working towards being a Big Picture School and although this work has not yet directly involved the year 10 team they, along with the rest of the staff, are confidently able to examine their work in front of their peers and are developing their capacity to reflect and develop their work collaboratively, based upon the ANSN principles of examining students’ work. The school has an openness in relation to conversations about teacher practice that makes it an exciting place to learn ... for students and teachers!!