The core business at Radford

By Mr Brad Cooney, Deputy Principal and Head of Secondary School

Dear Families,

Learning is our core business at Radford College, and we pride ourselves on measuring the impact that our teachers have in the classroom and on creating learning opportunities for our young people to enable them to achieve their full potential across a broad range of academic disciplines.

Our teachers work hard to plan and prepare contemporary, relevant, and engaging pedagogy based upon three key principles.

Learning Intentions: Research demonstrates that teachers who are clear about what they want their students to learn as a result of each lesson, have greater impact on their students' learning outcomes.

Success Criteria: Our teachers clearly articulate and, in some instances demonstrate what learning outcomes are required for our students to experience success. This includes sequencing teaching to focus on the steps that lead to new knowledge, deeper understandings and increasingly sophisticated skill, varying instruction in response to immediate or real time feedback and asking questions to monitor understanding and progress.

Strong Teacher-Student Relationships: Teacher-student relationships shape the way our students think and act in school and in the classroom. Positive relationships lead to students feeling more confident about learning, classwork and school in general. A strong teacher-student relationship also fosters risk taking in learning and mistakes and a growth mindset for learning.

This is not new or revolutionary information about teaching and learning; however, it does highlight fundamental concepts and skills necessary for keeping a focus on learning and helps us to begin to build a shared language and understanding with colleagues about what learning looks, feels and sounds like in our context.

By providing our academic staff with ongoing professional learning opportunities to develop these core principles, we aim to encourage a culture of learning and character education to enhance the quality teaching and learning that is happening at Radford College.