My name is Anne Girolami.
I'm head of information services at Mercy College in Coburg.
We have around 600 students
that come from 48 different cultural backgrounds,
so that means we have a high number of students
who are from a non-English-speaking background.
The first step in the planning process
is to find out from the subject teachers -
what do they want the students to learn?
And what are their expectations of the students in their learning?
We would aim to meet around three to four times.
It's dependent on the content of the work.
It depends if the unit is new.
My name's Francesca Pisano.
I'm a Year 7 history teacher here at Mercy College.
And I'm Gemma Ind and I'm also a Year 7 history teacher
and the head of humanities.
Hello. Thank you for making some time to meet.
This is our first in the series of planning meetings
for the Ancient Rome assignment.
What is it that you would like the girls to learn?
I think the most important thing that they learn is the legacies from Rome
because that leads into what they do in future years in history.
I think the important thing is they need to be an expert
on whatever topic that they research.
So we have researched in the past a series of topics,
but they need to be able to then feed that back to the rest of the class.
OK, now tell me, what are you expecting the girls
to be able to do during this unit of work?
I think the biggest thing that I'm looking for
is that they actually get the information
and then put it in their own words.
And, I don't know, I think from a history point of view,
it's important that they're not just relying on one source.
That if they get some information,
that they verify it with something else.
So that they're seeing that, "Well, maybe it's not the same.
"And why isn't it the same? Why is it giving me different information?"
So that's a historical thing that they need to be able to do.
I just want to show you something.
Remember at the beginning of the year,
I did the information literacy survey with the Year 7s.
And this is the raw data that they came up with,
and it's really interesting because the things that you are expecting
the students to do in terms of putting their word...
..putting the information in their own words
is one of the things that they were very low on from the survey.
So here is the 7A survey.
So you've got the information process here.
This is their marks there.
So from our last meeting,
we all had particular things that we needed to do.
Take the bones of the assessed piece of work,
and I've put in the information process
as a way of showing the girls that, yes,
what we mean by 'defining', what we mean by 'locating', 'selecting',
'organising', 'assessing' and 'evaluating'.
So this is the first draft of it.
By all means, it's open to be critiqued.
The other thing I did was here is a sample of the data sheet.
I couldn't get it any... It will be on A3.
Is it coming together? Can you see how...?
GEMMA: There's a lot of direction in it,
which is what they were missing in the old one.
OK. Oh, good.
They needed a lot of assistance
and I think this is the assistance that they needed.
How to actually record their information,
not just, "Oh, I'll copy and paste that."
OK, as you can see, I found some resources.
These ones are some of the books that the girls can use.
These in particular have all the roles
that we mentioned from our last meeting.
And also on Amlib, at the moment, in the catalogue,
there's about four websites that the girls can go to.
And I'd like them to use those ones first
because those websites, they've been ratified.
-Or they're more authentic. -Yeah, yeah.
It's not a hit and miss.
If you can cast your mind back
to when we first had our planning session to now,
where everything is finished, marked, the girls have their results.
What were some positives about the whole experience?
I really like the way how they wrote it in their own words.
Yeah, I think they worked really well in groups.
And they sort of held each other accountable too with the data charts
because they used each other's data charts
to write their particular paragraph for the documentary brief.
Is it possible if I gave you some questions to ask the girls,
to get some formal feedback from them,
about the whole process as well?
-Definitely. -About working in the group.
Using the data charts, filling in the learning journal.
Just so that we can have a look at that
and be mindful of that for the next class
with the other half of the Year 7s.
-FRANCESCA: That would be great. -GEMMA: We'll do that next lesson.
Working with a teacher librarian like Anne has really helped
to understand how information is processed and gathered,
and how the students can interpret that to complete their assignment.
Anne's expertise as a teacher librarian has helped us focus
more on the process as well as the outcome.
And actually illustrating those steps for us
will help us, I believe,
when working through the assignment with the students.
So I've found her input just invaluable