Duration: 2:20
Transcript
Adam Hendry, Assistant Principal: Learning and Achievement: Here at Parramatta Marist High School, we have around 1,075 students drawn from across Western Sydney. It's a comprehensive school, so we do have a number of students coming from over 30 different primary schools. The enrolment here in a comprehensive school is not based upon their academic ability, and we have noticed in recent years a real growth in students with needs coming into our school.
Prue Dawson, Diversity Coordinator: The students that were coming into our school were both requiring really intensive intervention, plus also universal supports in the classroom. So the whole school needed to understand and the whole staff needed to understand why we needed to implement an intervention and what that was going to hopefully achieve. We needed these students to be up to their peers in their reading, so that that could support all of the subjects.
Kathryn Lawrenson, Diversity Teacher: Sometimes, we do find that there are some students that will require support in both numeracy and literacy, but often it depends on the individual student, and we use our results to inform us as to which intervention or support the students require.
Tina Brunton, Diversity Teacher: Coming into a literacy intervention program from being a trained English high school teacher, I had to learn a lot because the assumption is that they can read when you get them. Having the support of a really great team who are primary teachers works really well.
Kathryn Lawrenson: All of us have had experience working with students that require more support. There’s one diversity teacher on each year, and then we've got teachers' assistants as well.
Prue Dawson: The reading intervention has its own progress-monitoring data that we collect throughout the intervention, which is around assessing the student's reading fluency. We have seen lots of positive gains from many of the students that have been through our reading intervention. They're much more confident with their reading. They're much more creative. They're much more willing to give things a go.
Kathryn Lawrenson: Ultimately, everything that you do achieve, and the times that you do pull them out, is making a difference. And, you know, if we can make a difference in some of these kids' lives, then that’s what we’re here for – that's our job.
Keywords: multi-tiered system of supports