On Wednesday we had our annual Junior School Community Morning which gave parents and grandparents the opportunity to experience a day at school. Many took up the opportunity and enjoyed working alongside their children in the classroom. There were a wide variety of interactive learning activities that teachers had prepared for everyone to participate in and learn together.
Since my early days of teaching way back in the mid 1990s I have come to appreciate the importance of what is known as cognitive load theory i.e. the theory of how human brains learn and store knowledge. There is a strong body of research demonstrating that children can only process a small amount of new information, but can process very large amounts of stored information. When an average person is learning or performing a particular task, they can only hold about 4 chunks of information in their working memory as they complete that task.
This research would have been very helpful to know when I taught that first Legal Studies class. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have walked into my 50 minute lesson with just one or 2 worksheets and an intention to provide students with up to 4 chunks or pieces of information which they could learn, process and remember before I moved on to another concept or area of content.
To make the craft of teaching even more complex, some students are only able to work with 2 or 3 chunks of information at any one time, while others may be able to manage more than 4. If all students in the class are given 4 pieces of information to learn, process and remember, some will be able to do this quickly and others will take longer. Those who struggle or find the task too easy may become withdrawn or behave inappropriately. When this occurs, wise teachers approach the child individually and try and adjust the task to get the student back on track.
This year I have been encouraging active learning. Active learning for all students requires their teacher to make wise judgements about the capacities of each child to learn effectively at any given time and use their intuitive judgement to adjust their lesson accordingly. Sometimes a child's cognitive load will be reduced because of their emotional state. For example, if a group of Year 6 boys have been playing soccer for the whole of lunchtime on a 35° day their cognitive load is probably going to be lower after lunch than it was before (praise God that we have air-conditioning in our classrooms now – perhaps this will increase cognitive load!).
Please be praying that our teachers will make wise judgements about the capacity of each of our children to learn and structure their lessons accordingly.
Staffing changes
Two long-standing and much loved members of our staff team will be retiring at the end of this term. Mrs Tania Edenborough has made a wonderful contribution as a teacher’s aide, helping many Secondary School students with identified learning needs to learn to the best of their ability and build their confidence to access the curriculum. The school is currently processing a very large number of applications to replace Tania and we hope to appoint someone in the next few weeks.
Mrs Jenny Humphreys has contributed to our school in many ways over a long period of time, most recently in our Junior School library. Jenny has always been hard-working, gracious and perceptive. Mrs Jo Rolland will replace Jenny in the library for the rest of this year. Jo has been a very active and supportive school parent for quite a few years and we warmly welcome her as part of our staff team.
Mr Brett Hartley
Principal
