Lakemba public school is a primary school in South Western Sydney many of
our families come from overseas so we're ninety eight point eight percent
non-english speaking background there are four executive and they lead the
stage based teams so they are no longer class teachers their team teachers stage
one follows on from our kindergarten year and then close into stage two
which is year three and four and stage 3 which comprises year five and six the
role of my team leader is to support us to guide us and to be there for us when
we we have any queries any issues anything we need I meet with my team in
the mornings once week and for half a day on a fortnightly basis during those
half day sessions I follow a learning plan which I draw up at the
beginning of the term the stage meetings that we have fortnightly are a very
valuable in its time set aside to discuss our teaching and discuss the
learning and the needs of the children's so it's working together on improving
the student outcomes and it's actually valuing the time that it takes to do
that
so the lesson study itself is involves a couple of stages each team collaborates
to devise a lesson the lesson is then taught by one of the team members who
volunteers to teach initially a lesson is taught and its observed by our stage
team after that their discussion takes place about what some of the strengths
and weaknesses were in the lesson and how it could possibly be improved then
the group together plans a second teaching of the lesson
the teachers who were observing all met together before my lesson and had a
discussion on what would take place we meet as a team the lesson plan is
distributed to everybody the observation sheets are distributed to everybody we
have a really quick discussion about this is what we're looking for remember
we're not looking at the teacher we're looking at the process we're looking at
the lesson it's important Lorraine our principal comes and she's a very active
participant in the observation and in the pre discussion and post discussions
after the completion of the lesson we met together again for a discussion the
discussion started with myself talking about how I felt the lesson went whether
the the outcomes were were met by the students it was nice having the
different level activities and I could I could walk around and see what each of
them are up to and I thought a range of children were answering questions I like
the way lady said do you want more thinking time so that the child could
actually opt out if they didn't think they'd answer and I was putting the
positive way last time I found a little bit harder to see what strategies they
were using I thought the things that she chose to change we're really good and it
worked very well it is daunting but when you're in the middle of it and after
you've had a discussion about it it's it's really really beneficial the lesson
study approach really gives us time to get in and see how other teachers teach
and pick up some really good ideas during the year we like to do two cycles
per semester
the funding that I've had at the moment has just taught me that there is
creative ways of actually addressing the needs of the school and when the funding
actually ceases I'm still going to have a priority on on teacher learning
because teacher learning actually improves student outcomes so that can be
done through a variety of ways looking at creative staffing combining positions
and sharing the positions the source of funding for those things can come from
global budget and also vacant positions and other ways of looking at staffing if
you make it a priority you'll find ways of making sure that staff have the time
they need to reflect and share their practice with others
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