Ravenswood School for Girls, Gordon, NSW

Ravenswood School for Girls, Gordon, NSW

This year, Ravenswood School has launched the Ravenswood Institute Professional Development Series, to provide ongoing training by teachers, for teachers.

One fascinating project recently run by the institute was in the area of Mind Brain Education (MBE) Science, an emerging transdisciplinary field that stands at the nexus between research and practice for educators. To accelerate the integration of these principles into teacher practice, staff participated in a workshop on Transformative Teaching and Learning at St Andrew’s School Maryland Washington DC.

A dedicated MBE translation team was subsequently created to experiment with MBE-informed teaching strategies at the various stages of student development. These strategies include active retrieval, spacing, and interleaving practice to aid long-term memory; integrating joy, play, and downtime alongside rigour and challenge; applying metacognitive questioning in reflection and feedback; and scaffolding and sequencing concepts to help manage the cognitive load experienced by students.

Ravenswood School also proactively addressed the challenges of COVID-19 this year. The school harnessed the expertise of Christine Morgan of the National Mental Health Commission, youth mental health organisation Headspace, and Lisa Messenger from Collective Hub, to support the mental health and wellbeing of teachers, students, and parents.