Wooranna Park Primary School, Melbourne, Australia

Wooranna Park Primary School | Stimulating Learning Platforms | Best Educational Practice Videos | Other Wooranna Park Videos | Raison D’etre Document and Video

Updated: September, 2019

September, 2019: The newest Schools That Work video series from edutopia features my favorite primary school on the planet, Wooranna Park Primary School, in Melbourne, Australia. See Suzie Boss's excellent profile of One School's Uncompromising Take on Student Choice. See much more about Wooranna Park on the school website, extensive web profile on my website, and the school's won Best Practice videos. Click on video to play and click on Fullscreen to view at size.

Learning Environments and Stimulating Learning Platforms: A Student-Driven Approach to Experiential Learning
Enigma Missions: Passion-Driven Research Projects
Learning Symposiums: Connecting Public Speaking to Critical Thinking
Provocations: Sparking Curiosity With Self-Directed Learning

October, 2015: New report on Professional Practices to Increase Student Engagement in Learning, Learning Frontiers, Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), and the Innovation Unit. Profiles on Pages 24-28 Wooranna Park's key practices: Learning Agreement Time, Prep Kids as teachers, Enigma Missions, and Stimulating Learning Platforms.
April, 2015: Author and journalist Suzie Boss visits Wooranna Park, a School Designed to Excite and Engage. Also see Suzie's blogs and books.
March, 2015: Wooranna Park Primary School's Prep Year (K2) 2015 Blog
October 15, 2014: Wooranna Park where school is like Disneyland, By Benjamin Preiss, The Age (Victoria, Australia)

Wooranna Park Primary School in Melbourne, Australia, is a 21st Century Elementary School whose mission is "to provide students with a learning environment that recognises children learn best when engaged with real world, authentic tasks, involving problem solving and collaboration with peers on interdisciplinary, research based project work, where the teacher's role includes that of coach and facilitator and where students are empowered to take responsibility for their learning." The school renovation to create learning environments that support more PBL and autonomous learning, completed in mid-2005, was supported by the Government of Victoria as a test case to see how new spaces could support progressive learning. The school "believes that children are born with all of their senses ready to make meaning of their world; that they come to school with knowledge and experiences. They are autonomous learners, ready to explore the world around them; and that an inter-disciplinary, authentic, negotiated and collaborative curriculum is essential to their development."

What is exceptional about Wooranna Park Primary School is that it is both an exemplar of 21st Century Learning and Teaching and an exemplar of New Learning Environments, including pioneer innovation internationally in the development of Stimulating Learning Platforms. Thanks to my colleague Randy Fielding of Fielding Nair International for alerting me to the new learning environments at Wooranna Park Primary School. -- Bob, January, 2012, Updated May 3, 2012

March, 2013 -- Wooranna Park has just completed a series of videos about all the school's educational practices. The first video, Personalising Student Learning (Australian spelling), provides an overview of the school's practices and the next 12 videos describe those practices and show them in action: Learning Agreement Time, Student Led Reporting to Parents, Student Voice, Student-Teacher Conferencing, Targeted Teaching (small group workshops), Documenting Children’s Learning, Student Learning Plans, The Third Teacher (Learning Environments), Authentic Learning (real-world), Collaborative Learning, Differentiating the Curriculum, and Autonomous Learners Program for Year 5 & 6 Students. -- Bob

 

Woorana Park Primary School, Australia - Tomorrow's School Today - This short version of the video shows how the school was renovated to enable more 21st Century Learning.
Summer 2012 -- Just released video on the Learning Environments at Wooranna Park Primary School, Melbourne, Australia

 

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March, 2013 -- Wooranna Park has just completed a series of videos about all the school's educational practices. The first video, Personalising Student Learning (Australian spelling), provides an overview of the school's practices and the next 12 videos describe those practices and show them in action: Learning Agreement Time, Student Led Reporting to Parents, Student Voice, Student-Teacher Conferencing, Targeted Teaching (small group workshops), Documenting Children’s Learning, Student Learning Plans, The Third Teacher (Learning Environments), Authentic Learning (real-world), Collaborative Learning, Differentiating the Curriculum, and Autonomous Learners Program for Year 5 & 6 Students.