In today’s classrooms, the challenge of responding thoughtfully and effectively to learner variability is a central focus for primary educators across Australia. Essential Assessment (EA) recently hosted a thought leadership webinar panel with two experienced educators: Judith McMurrich, Instructional Leader at St Andrew’s Primary School Marayong (NSW) and Kellie Fletcher, Deputy Principal at Canungra State School (QLD), to discuss how early clarity, daily review, and evidence-informed judgment are vital for purposeful teaching.
Here are the key takeaways from their conversation on moving from clarity to action in the classroom:
1. Knowing Your Students: Beyond the Data
Before formal assessments begin, both educators emphasised the critical importance of getting to know students as people and learners.
- Early focus on relationships: The beginning of the school year is about building strong relationships, fostering a safe environment for students to make mistakes and ask questions.
- A formative, informal start: Instead of relying solely on the older data from the previous year, Judith’s team uses informal, low-stakes tasks, like writing samples about holidays or fun spelling games with whiteboard check-ins. This allows teachers to observe what students actually know and can do without the initial pressure of a test.
- Avoid misconceptions: By not rushing to judge students based on their past results, teachers give learners the opportunity to demonstrate their full potential, avoiding early misconceptions that can undermine confidence.
2. Responding to Variability with Intentional Structure
Acknowledging that every classroom has a range of achievement, the discussion turned to how schools can respond without fragmenting the group.
- Multi-tiered intervention: Both sites implement tiers of intervention, with Tier 1 (whole-class instruction) remaining the non-negotiable core. Kellie stressed that maintaining year-level instruction for all students is crucial to preventing the achievement gap from widening.
- Targeted support via data: EA data has been a “game changer”, replacing time-consuming manual spreadsheets. The real-time, curriculum-aligned data allows teachers to:
- Identify students for Tier 2/3 intervention with support teachers and aides.
- Organise flexible grouping to pace and explicitly teach concepts differently to various levels — including extending ‘gifted kids’ who may have previously had a ceiling put on their learning.
- Collaboration is key: Judith’s team of five teachers (four classroom, one diversity) relies on constant sharing and collaboration to better meet diverse needs, integrating in-class support before grouping students.
3. Daily Review: The Engine for Long-Term Memory
Daily review emerged as a powerful Tier 1 strategy for managing cognitive load and ensuring concepts transfer to long-term memory.
- Pegging new knowledge: Daily review across every Key Learning Area (KLA) allows teachers to revisit yesterday’s learning and ‘peg’ new knowledge onto existing understanding.
- Active engagement: Using whiteboards daily encourages students to write, think, and do, which increases the likelihood of long-term retention compared to passively receiving information.
- Fostering agency: By making the learning intention and success criteria transparent during the daily check-in, students gain a clearer understanding of the lesson’s goal. As Judith noted: “Taking that mystery out has really helped them feel more confident in owning their learning and owning what they do know.”
- Adjustments with intent, not urgency: Kellie highlighted that daily reviews help teachers see which concepts students are failing to commit to their long-term memory, allowing for targeted revisiting before diagnostic assessments later in the year reveal a bigger problem.
4. Professional Judgment: Sharpened by Evidence
The final part of the discussion addressed the balancing act between a teacher’s instinct and the influx of data.
- Data as support, not definition: While data is crucial for backing up tough conversations with parents, Judith cautioned against “drowning” new teachers in it, leading them to lose faith in their professional judgment. Observations and daily evidence are just as important as diagnostic tests.
- The symbiotic relationship: Formative and summative assessments are no longer viewed as separate, but as having a symbiotic relationship. Teachers are constantly “dipping in” to data and formative check-ins to inform immediate decisions, which then feed into the larger, spaced distal assessments.
- Reducing workload, increasing impact: Kellie noted that online platforms like EA have freed up teachers’ time. Reducing administrative workload allows them more time to engage their professional intuition and share real-time progress data with students, which is “gold” for student motivation and self-reflection.
Conclusion
Strong teaching begins with clarity. When educators take the time to truly understand their students and what the curriculum is asking, their decisions become deliberate and responsive. Evidence does not replace professional judgment; it sharpens it. By fostering a common understanding of learners and their expectations, classrooms become consistent, responsive, and focused on learning that lasts.
Watch the webinar for free here.
