05 Jun 2020
A fair question from a teaching friend of mine.
The Inclusive Education Faculty at Rose Bay Secondary College delivers the NSW Life Skills Syllabus to students with Autism and/or mild to moderate intellectual disability within the comprehensive high school context. Students frequently have low literacy and require high ratios of support when accessing learning materials and completing tasks. As the remote learning roll-out began across the school, the idea of having our classes login to online platforms such as Microsoft Teams and complete coursework in the same style as the mainstream sat well above our station.
The feeling was however fleeting, and never met with the notion of resignation. A benefit of the IEF are our high teacher/ student ratios, giving our staff unparalleled understanding of our students and how they learn. With this insight, and strong working partnerships with our families, as a team we were able to develop unique strategies within the online learning environment.
Each learner is of course unique; the students of the IEF are still however, placed into one of three suitability classes. Each class ended up experiencing success through varied delivery, best suited to their needs.
IEFC, a class designated to students with Autism and our most independent learners; found themselves thriving in online learning. Mr Edwin Carter quickly found that live stream classes with interactive worksheets best supported student learning from home. Interestingly, class engagement and work completion actually increased during the period. So much so, that in the transition back to face to face learning, Mr Carter will continue this method of delivery within the traditional classroom environment.
IEFR, a class for students with mild intellectual disabilities, had literacy lessons pre-recorded with the teacher Miss Emma Radford delivering direct instruction style lessons and having students record answers on whiteboards and worksheets. This was most engaging and productive – so much so, that it was reported by one parent that her son thought lessons were being live streamed. School is not simply about academics as our student’s social development is a priority across all our programming; programmed lessons were supported by a daily morning video conference with all class members to discuss their progress, wellbeing and any news they may have had. In full disclosure, this did on occasions turn into an IEFR pet parade; and as Miss Radford is an avid dog lover, this wasn’t exactly discouraged.
IEFD came on board very quickly in adapting to the remote learning world. As it did take a few weeks of trial and error in discovering what types of practical and theoretical lessons could be accessed by the students. Students in this class are spread across all learning stages, from foundational work through to stage 6. Therefore, work tasks were differentiated to meet all students needs. Most of the students in this class, enjoyed participating in the live conference session with Mrs Dobb and Ms McDonald either coaching or jumping around in their own remote learning spaces for PDHPE along with the students at home. Again, many of the teaching strategies were deemed a success, and will continue to be incorporated into future programming.
As we move back to our traditional methods of delivery, it is important to reflect on some of the strengths of our online teaching practice. It was a rapid fire process; which, without, we would not have revealed some unseen capabilities in and unthought of pedagogies for our students. IEF teaching staff are now analysing the best and most engaging aspects of their online teaching and applying these to our face to face practice, moving forward.
Lastly, our success in this period would not have been at all possible without the support of our parents, who really did come on this journey with us. From setting students up for success in home learning, to participating in lessons and Zoom/Microsoft Teams conferences and submitting daily evidence of student work. We definitely couldn’t have done it without you!