What does the Science of Learning look like in the Primary Science Classroom? Primary School is an essential part of the explicit knowledge building students need engage in to become scientifically literate. This talk will share the recommendations from the E4L Toolkit and the Education Endowment Fund from the UK, and support teachers to make decisions on how to engage with Scientific vocabulary, Science Inquiry and Common Misconceptions.

During the talk, we’ll share how Science Inquiry differs from Inquiry learning, how you can make small adjustments for big impact, and why Formative Assessment and Responsive Teaching are vital to success in Science.

Simplifying phonics with fidelity: guidance for all students and especially those with disabilities, neurodiversity’s and trauma backgrounds.

“Simplifying phonics with fidelity” aims to cut out the fluff and target the important skills and concepts that all students need when learning to read. Charlotte will unpack the tried and tested methods that have shown to have the most impact after four years of implementation of structured literacy including systematic synthetic phonics instruction (SSP) at Lake Colac School. This session will provide a good base if you are starting to implement SSP in your school and also a check-in for fidelity for those already on the SSP journey.

The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) recently released resources to support school leaders to lead a whole school approach to classroom management, building on AERO’s foundational classroom management resources for teachers.

AERO’s Principal Teaching and Learning Specialist Cate Whiting will share the evidence base behind the foundational classroom management resources and explain how the new professional learning resources can support school leaders to foster a shared understanding and consistent application of evidence-based classroom management approaches across the school. Plans for further guidance and tools to be released next year will also be shared.

The purpose of this seminar is to offer a scientific ‘lens’ through which educators can critique the evidence for different teaching approaches in mathematics and numeracy. Principally, Dr Siobhan Merlo will discuss how working memory load can be managed effectively to expedite learning.

The following topics will be explored:

1) Understanding our cognitive hardware and how we learn

2) Optimal conditions for learning

3) Our cognitive software – Biologically Primary and Biologically Secondary Knowledge

4) Implications for instruction and the way information is presented

Over the last 7 years, No More Marking have used Comparative Judgement to assess over 2 million pieces of student writing from across the globe. In this webinar Daisy Christodoulou will share what they have learned about students' writing from these assessments, and how you can use these insights to improve your students' writing.

Drawing from and extending on Bjork’s ‘Desirable Difficulties’, this talk looks at the establishment of a classroom environment that embraces the uncomfortable – from counter-intuitive but highly effective teaching techniques to the promotion of successful, but ever so uncomfortable, learning habits.

Embarking on a Churchill Fellowship in 2023 to investigate best practices in mathematics teaching at a primary school level, Liana visited 6 countries in 7 weeks: Singapore, Japan, Finland, Estonia, Canada, USA. The presentation focuses on her experiences and looks at the commonalities and differences between primary mathematics education in Australia and abroad.

This presentation provides a critical analysis of the empirical evidence surrounding the use of Genre Theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)-based pedagogies in K-10 education, particularly regarding their impact on reading and writing outcomes. Despite their widespread adoption in educational curricula, initial teacher training, and literacy practices, the effectiveness of these approaches in improving student outcomes remains uncertain.

There are two items at the top of just about every primary literacy teacher’s wish list: 1. Scope and sequence documents, 2. Word lists. Leaving 1. aside for a moment, what’s the problem with word lists? Why does linguist and school coach Lyn Stone never create or issue them? Find out why Lyn finds herself saying, ’The best word list is a book!’ everywhere she goes. Leave this talk with a much better chance of never having to seek a word list again.

Writing is a potentially powerful lever for deepening knowledge, improving reading comprehension and analytical thinking, and enabling all students to access grade-level material. But it’s also the most difficult thing we ask students to do. To unlock the power of writing instruction, we need to: (1) make writing less overwhelming by starting at the sentence level if that’s what students need; (2) teach grammar and writing conventions in the context of students’ own writing; and (3) embed writing activities in the content of the core curriculum—in any subject and at any grade level. This presentation will provide examples of effective activities.

Teaching Fractions Using an Explicit CRA Approach: How to bring research-based pedagogy into daily practice and transform a student’s understanding of fractions, decimals and percents.

Spelling Mastery is the renowned Direct Instruction Spelling Program that is proven to transform spelling results in all types of students. This unique evidence-based program approaches spelling through strategies, patterns, and rules. The straightforward lessons in Spelling Mastery combine phonemic, morphemic, and whole-word instruction to make spelling easier to learn, and teaching students to mastery.

The Phonics Lesson Plans team in the Victorian Department of Education will present to Think Forward Educators on the new approach to reading in F-2 in Victorian government schools. This session will provide deeper insight into the announcement on reading along with the systematic synthetic phonics approach. The department’s Phonics Lesson Plans team will discuss the resources they are planning to provide as part of the English Lesson Plans for F-2. Join to hear more and to ask questions!

Join the all-star team of Toni Hatten-Roberts, David Morkunas, and Ollie Lovell for an action packed hour of both in-depth theory and practical ideas for improving your primary mathematics instruction. Covering everything from well-embedded instructional routines, to cognitive load considerations, and the why and how of structuring systematic reviews of learning, this session will leave all attendees with multiple practical strategies to try in their classroom tomorrow. Towards the end of the presentation, Toni, David, and Ollie will also provide information about the Explicit Mathematics Program, a highly structured F-2 mathematics program, tailored to all State and Territory curriculums, that will be released in 2025.

Explore the differences between discovery-based learning, problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning, explicit instruction, and direct instruction.

Discuss the learning theories that drive inquiry-based learning and explicit instruction.

Explain why inquiry-based learning rose to popularity.

If you no longer use benchmarking systems in literacy instruction, how do you listen to your students read?

Karen Woods from Templestowe Heights Primary School wrote a TFE Journal article about this common dilemma facing teachers. This webinar will expand on the ideas in the article and Karen will be available for questions.

We are convening a panel of Victorian government school teachers to discuss their views on these new policies and the potential impact.

The panel will address questions such as:

Do you support the new policies?

Do you think a phonics/explicit teaching mandate hurts teacher workload?

What has your experience been with phonics/explicit teaching? What has you experience been at schools that do not have these approaches?

What support and resources do schools need to implement this effectively?

Spelling is an essential transcription skill for writing, as well as a visible word-level language skill that supports reading and vocabulary learning. It is also a complex word-formation process. While the importance of explicit instruction in spelling has become widely accepted, Tessa discusses why educators should consider a nuanced approach to explicit spelling instruction so that all students can thrive in their learning.

Ask your questions live!

Every school in the world is wanting to improve, increase results and lead students to success. Traditional professional development models vary in effectiveness and many are failing us greatly. We need professional development that supports the teacher to increase their expertise in teaching.

In this webinar we will look at the power of instructional coaching as a fundamental professional development tool. Participants will experience examples of instructional coaching structures, the impact and growth that these programs can offer and how accessing an instructional coach can supercharge teaching.

This presentation will focus on how educators can develop and promote meaningful personalised maths instruction within inclusive classrooms. We will explore research findings that focus on the development of an individualised inclusive educational framework utilising personalized supports, explicit early numeracy skill instruction, age/stage-aligned math outcomes and embedded systematic instruction for students with complex learning needs (i.e., intellectual disability, autism, developmental disability).

One of the most dangerous assumptions a teacher can make is that their students are listening to them. Most of the time, they are not. In this session, we will look at what happens if students are not listening during the I Do phase of a worked example, and how to make sure they are listening. There will be an opportunity to plan and rehearse some checks for listening for an upcoming lesson, so you can take what you learn straight into the classroom. Whilst this workshop uses examples from the world of high-school maths, the key principles transfer across to different phases and subjects.

Participants in the webinar will:

Discover key tools and routines for common classroom scenarios (entry routines, gaining attention and defusing debate)

Experience how instructional coaching and rehearsal can be used to improve teacher practice

Gain insight into the school level systems that support student engagement in the classroom.

This webinar introduces Direct Instruction - the unique teaching approach created by Seigfried Engelmann at the University of Oregon in the 1960’s, origin of the Science of Learning and Science of Reading body of programs and research with which we are all familiar with today. The webinar will give an overview of the background of DI including Project Follow Through (the largest educational research study ever conducted), the Philosophy underpinning DI, and the basics of the teaching pedagogy that underpins all DI programs.

PWRD Leadership, in partnership with Teach Like a Champion, are proud to present a Teach Like a Champion overview. This overview will unpack the key fundamentals of Teach Like a Champion in the areas of Engaging Academics, Classroom Culture and Checking for Understanding while demonstrating the alignment with the latest evidence.

Ask your questions live!

Our school would like to share how our school - St Mary's Primary in Myrtleford - shifted from failing results across the school to a school achieving excellent results using the science of reading and learning. We would like to share the mistakes we made and what to avoid and the success of where we are at now, five years later.

This session will spend time looking at the research on the concrete-pictorial-abstract framework and how it can look in a maths lesson.

Ask your questions live!

Governments have dramatically underestimated what it takes to plan high-quality lessons every day. Grattan’s survey of 2,243 teachers and school leaders shows that many teachers are planning alone, and buckling under the weight of this near-impossible task. But it needn’t be this way. Grattan visited five schools which have adopted whole-school planning approaches. Come along to hear how they did it, and how their students and teachers are benefitting.