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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
April, 2015: Author and journalist Suzie Boss visits Wooranna Park, a School Designed to Excite and Engage. Also see Suzie's blogs and books.
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.
About
- Wooranna Park Primary School Website
- Principal: Ray Trotter. Assistant Principals: Jennie Vine, Janet Whittle and Yianna Pullen
- 89-105 Carlton Road, Dandenong North VIC 3175, Phone: (03) 9795 2007
- Enrollment: 346, Gender: Co-Ed
- Twitter, Facebook, Youtube
- School Profile
- Vision: If our students are to maximize their learning, then Wooranna Park Primary School must be a place of optimism, excitement and challenge, where students and teachers see each day as a journey, full of purpose and where intellectual engagement and connectedness to the outside world are priorities.
- Mission: 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.
- Philosophy
- Raison D'être document and Video: Articulates the School Vision and Mission, and charts its Principles of Learning, Pedagogical Practice, Organizational Structures, Physical Environment, Assessment, School leadership, Theorists.
- ‘CREATING A SCHOOL FOR THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY’: ONE SCHOOL’S JOURNEY by Ray Trotter (Principal, Wooranna Park Primary School), TEACH LESS, LEARN MORE CONFERENCE, Singapore, 1st March, 2006.
- Downloads and School Pictures
- School Profiles for Student Assessment
- Annual Report 2010
- Stimulating Learning Platforms
Articles &
Case Studies
- Wooranna Park where school is like Disneyland, By Benjamin Preiss, The Age (Victoria, Australia), October 11, 2014
- A model school for all, The Age, November 29, 2004
- Research into the connection between built learning spaces and student outcomes, Research eLert, Victoria department of Education and Early Childhood Development, December 2010.
- Designing learning spaces that work: A case for the importance of history, by Kellee Frith and Denise Whitehouse, Swinburne University, History of Education Review, Vol. 38, no. 2, 2009
- DESIGNING FROM THE ‘INSIDE-OUT’: ‘INSIDE-OUT’ PROJECT Can the physical environment be a ‘teacher’ in itself?, Featherston Archive
- NE(X)T GEN LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS, by Dr. Kenn Fisher Educational Planner Rubida Research, The Scottish Government, Building Excellence: Exploring the implications of the Curriculum for Excellence for School Buildings
- Deep learning in the 21st century: from theory to practice. Interview with Esme Capp about the transformation of Wooranna Park Primary School in Australia, addressing the key question about children learn and how ...
- Deep Learning in the 21st Century « Neil Hopkin's Blog, Oct 12, 2009 – Australian educator Esme Capp was visiting Birmingham to work with ... of Wooranna Park Primary School in Melbourne, Australia
- Learning space turns school design inside out, by Robin Taylor, Swinburne Magazine, March 2009. "The refurbishment at Wooranna Park was supported by the Victorian Government as a test case to see how new spaces could support progressive learning. We needed to find a school where teachers had similar beliefs about learning and recognised the role of the physical environment,” Ms Featherston says.""
- Wooranna Park Primary School Case Study, Melbourne, Australia, by Annalise Gehling, Designshare, July 2009
- Mary Featherston's school designs | ArchitectureAU, Sep 1, 2011 – Wooranna Park Primary School, designed by Mary Featherston Design.
- Mary Featherston Design (Archive)
- The Classroom Is Obsolete: It's Time for Something New - By Prakash Nair, Education Week, July 29, 2011. Reprinted in School Leadership
Videos &
Slides
- Wooranna Park's Learning Environment, The Third Teacher
- Learning Agreement Time for individual and collaborative student work at at Wooranna Park Primary School
- Collaborative Learning at Wooranna Park Primary School
- Documenting Children's Learning, Creating Windows to the Future -- Student Projects at Wooranna Park Primary School
- Wooranna Park's Raison D'être video
- Wooranna Park Primary School Video page
- Wooranna Park Primary School Youtube Channel
- Australia-Korea BRIDGE School Partnerships Project: Wooranna Park makes links with Kangnae Elementary School.
- Woorana Park Primary School, Australia - This video shows how the school was renovated to enable more 21st Century Learning. It also focuses on how the staff works together on Team Teaching.
Channel Seven news report (December 23, 2011) of the Dragon Boat, a Stimulating Learning Platform at Wooranna Park Primary School
- Classrooms for the Future - YouTube. This is a video based on what a classroom of the future should be. The majority of the images used here a from Woorana Park Primary School, Victoria Australia. A school for tomorrow, today.
- Improving Learnings with Refurbished Buildings for Students in Lower-Economic Areas, Frank Locker PhD, Frank Locker Educational Planning, Remodeling Education Spaces Conference, Manchester, UK, September 2010. See slides 44-49 for excellent images of Wooranna Park Primary School.