Minnis Journals

For Education Leaders

No failure learning in military instruction
Military instruction probably predates school-type education by several thousand years, and it is predicated on four important principles: 1 Everyone, regardless of their educational history, has to demonstrate the essential knowledge, skills and values being taught 2 Learning is often a matter of personal and group survival 3 The aggregated outcomes of the learning are linked to strategic responsiveness 4 The instructor breaks the lesson content into “bite-sized, sequential chunks” that must be learned before the next part of the lesson commences.
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Corwin offers free resources for transition to online learning
Corwin Australia is offering its School Leaders’ Online Toolkit and Online Teaching Toolkit free to schools needing help with transitioning to online learning. To access the toolkits and receive new resources and ongoing updates, school principals and teachers need to register online. Read more

Australian teacher named in the top 50 shortlist for us $1 million Global Teacher Prize 2020
Maths teacher Ashley Stewart from Newton Moore Senior High School, Bunbury, Western Australia, has been included in the top 50 shortlist for the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize 2020 in partnership with UNESCO. Now in its sixth year, the US$1 million award is the largest prize of its kind and the 2020 winning ceremony will be held in London. Read more

Good news for Wakakirri Schools re COVID-19. The Show will go on!
Wakakirri has announced that "The show will go on" for the 300+ schools that have signed up for the 2020 Story Dance Competition. A series of strategies have been developed to ensure that Wakakirri live shows will still go on should the 500 people public gathering ban be in place when the Wakakirri live season takes place.
• Wakakarri 2020 will go ahead
• Performances will be moved to late August / September
• Strategies have been developed for the Performance Season to limit crowds or continue with a ’no crowd’ format if required. Read more

Primary schools’ virus response needs to leverage tech
Mass closing of schools both primary and secondary in response to the virus’ spread hasn’t happened, yet. And while secondary students will probably be used to working online and self-directing the challenge of teaching primary school children without a teacher being in the room is tougher. Read more

Sensory strategies in the classroom
What comes to mind when you visualise a classroom? The posters on the wall, the chitter chatter of students, desks with colourful pencils, children’s artwork?
For a student with sensory processing challenges, these things can all be very distressing and get in the way of their learning.
Sensory processing refers to the way the body sorts, interprets, and responds to information from the senses. For those with sensory processing challenges, interpreting and organising sensory input can be difficult, often leading to undesirable social-emotional and behavioural responses. Read more

AEU – My School changes ignore NAPLAN’s real problems
Changes to the way NAPLAN data is presented on the My School website to compare the performance of students from like backgrounds do nothing to address the issues of corrupted data introduced by the shambolic rollout of NAPLAN Online says the AEU’s Corenna Haythorpe.
“It makes no difference how you present NAPLAN data when the data itself is irretrievably corrupted, ACARA’s own National Report earlier this year admitted that NAPLAN results had been corrupted by connectivity issues,” Ms Haythorpe said.
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