End-of-year Feedback 2016 27/11/2016

Hi Tracey

Thanks for your end-of-year feedback! Your commitment to professional development throughout
2016 has been extremely commendable and is evidenced by your entry to the DECD HAT density
building initiative. In 2016, as a school and as a Learning Area, we have made some significant
transformations and in 2017 we will have opportunity to further transact on them. We have worked
on the strategic direction of High Quality Teaching and Learning by implementing the GIHS
Pedagogical Framework. As a Learning Area we have successfully implemented and
experimented with English Language Plus; and your collaboration with Gail to personalise learning
for that cohort has been significant and much appreciated. The EALD team has also reflected on
how to improve performance through the strategic use of the EALD elaborations of the AITSL
standards; and our discussions of this process clearly evidence your comprehensive understanding
of how to structure teaching and learning, as well as its assessment, around EALD language and
literacy progressions.

English Language Plus

Well done in collaborating with Gail on the 2016 Year 9 English Language Plus curriculum and for
implementing the positive move to assessment of student learning via the Language & Literacy
Levels; Ive appreciated your flexibility and willingness to experiment along the way.

Your focus on achieving the Australian Curriculum: English Language & Literacy Strands through
the Literature Strand (text in context) was very successful. In constructing teaching learning cycles
to close student language and literacy gaps I was impressed by your focus on clause combination
and sentence construction, and the resource booklet you created to help students succeed. Your
2016 hard work and experimentation, including the collection of student evidence, will enable you
to effectively better sequence and improve 9ELP for 2017.

The Year 9ELP cohort was a difficult one in that it contained a large number of students with
undiagnosed learning difficulties. Your patience, work and reporting on their achievement has
allowed me to successfully evidence that those students must be supported differently in 2017.

Mentoring a first-year-out-teacher to use Functional Grammar strategies through the GIHS

Pedagogical Framework

By first team-teaching 10 EAL with Nikita and then by providing her with further advice, feedback
and mentoring after the class split, you have demonstrated important pedagogical leadership
skills. Nikita has benefitted greatly from your modelling of how to close language and literacy gaps
and personalise learning through the selection of impactful functional grammar strategies that
move students along the Register Continuum. Your shared VLE has successfully closed between-
class-differences and contains clear evidence that students are using Informative Assessment to
regularly progress their learning.

You have also mentored Nikita in flipped learning; effectively demonstrating how students can
work with functional grammar fluencies out-of-class - such as creating expanded nominal groups
and carefully selecting differentiated processes to make their writing more sophisticated so that
real discussion and intellectual stretch can occur in-class.
Your task design is innovative and I particularly liked how you collaborated with Nikita and the 10
EAL students to first create an Information Report on graphic novel conventions before working on
themes in Coraline. This first step ensured that students could first understand and use technical
terms before describing and evaluating authorial Narrative messages.

Through your very organised and detailed documentation, including teaching learning cycles, task
sheets, rubrics and assessment schedules, you have also modelled for Nikita GIHS high
expectations in this regard.

EALD Elaborations on the AITSL Standards and PDA

Congratulations on using the elaborations to effectively inform the setting of professional learning
goals leading to improved practice. This has informed PDA discussions and also enabled you to
get a bearing on your progression in relation to objective national benchmarks in terms of EALD
practice.

Richard Waugh (EALD Leader)