This practice guide will support you to respond to behaviours associated with disengagement and disruption to maintain a safe and supportive learning environment for all students, and support students to focus on their learning. Positive learning environments are created when teachers establish and maintain positive teacher–student relationships and proactively teach, model, revise and reinforce the expected behaviours, routines and rules with their students. In a positive learning environment, expected behaviours are recognised, encouraged and reinforced using acknowledgement and praise.

This practice guide will help teachers understand the ways rules and routines support learning and how to equip students with the skills to participate in routines that support their learning.
This practice guide will help you reflect and take action to develop your practice with a greater understanding of:

*the ways rules and routines support learning
*how to equip students with the skills to participate in routines that support their learning

Scanning is a skill that supports and maintains positive student behaviour. Scanning is the practice of consistently and intentionally monitoring all students. It allows you to gather information efficiently and regularly about students’ behaviour and participation in learning.

This worksheet is designed to help teachers, educators and leaders use online and library search tools to locate rigorous and relevant research evidence on new and effective approaches to inform their practice.

This guide is the third in a series of 4 and focuses on selecting practices to deliver improvement. Once you’ve prioritised the curriculum, pedagogical and assessment approaches that relate to each goal and target, you need to select practices to improve each approach and plan how to deliver this improvement. For the purpose of this guide, a practice is the practical application of an approach. This guide recommends practical steps for selecting practices that support your prioritised approaches, as well as for planning how to deliver improvement. We recommend reading this guide after you have read the second guide in this series, Prioritising Approaches to Achieve Each Goal. After reading this guide, we recommend you read Evaluating for Continuous Improvement.

This practice guide will support you in setting behaviour expectations for your students when completing learning tasks, to create a safe learning environment and minimise disruption. Students undertake learning tasks individually, in pairs, in small groups and as a whole class. It’s important to set clear behaviour expectations for learning in each of these ways so all students know what is required of them and are better able to take responsibility for their behaviour.

Strategic planning is an iterative process that requires a purposeful investment of time. These guides are designed for flexible use alongside system supports, providing a starting point rather than a complete outline of everything schools must do. They are designed to help school leaders with strategic planning directly related to learning. School leaders may also choose to include aspects of school improvement that enable learning (for example, student wellbeing) using a similar approach. Some guidance may not apply in all contexts and may look different in schools of different sizes. Reasonable adjustments should be made to fit school context where necessary. This guide is the first in a series of 4 and focuses on setting goals and targets for student learning. In the context of this guide, a 'goal’ represents an aim for improvement in a learning area. A ‘target’ enables you to monitor progress towards this goal by measuring changes in the learning area over a specified time period (for example, by the end of the school term or year). This guide recommends practical steps for setting goals and targets for student learning. After reading this guide, we recommend you read Prioritising Approaches to Achieve Each Goal.

This Early Childhood Learning Trajectory video outlines children’s progress in social and emotional learning. It can be used alongside the EYLF 2.0 assessment and planning cycle to support children’s learning, development and wellbeing.

Spacing and retrieval practice can improve students’ long-term retention of their learning. This guide outlines key practices for using spacing and retrieval in the classroom:

Make sure learning retention is maximised by spacing learning across lessons.
Prompt your students to recall information in different ways to enhance long-term retention.
Plan your lessons around routines.

Implementation checklists are a list of practical steps you can take to support the implementation of an evidence-based practice in your setting.

This checklist focuses on spacing and retrieval practice.

Have I...

* looked at my curriculum documents to see what information my students will need to remember in the future?
* written clear learning objectives to establish what students will need to know and produce by the end of the unit?
* looked at my lesson sequences to see how the knowledge builds from one lesson to another?
planned deliberate opportunities throughout my unit for students to show me that they remember this information?
* developed lesson activities that allow students to show their knowledge in different ways?
* given students multiple opportunities to recall information before I assess them on it?

This practice guide will support you in establishing methods for students to gain your attention to request assistance, ask a question or share information. This is important for creating a safe and supportive learning environment and minimising disruptions.

The number of students in a classroom means that a signal is needed to gain the teacher’s attention rather than students calling out and moving around the room. Teaching, rehearsing, and reinforcing the signal students use to gain your attention will help to meet students’ needs, manage interruptions to teaching and learning, and create a positive and supportive learning environment for all students.

This practice guide will support you in refining an effective routine for students moving through the school. This is important for maintaining a safe and orderly school environment in which learning time is maximised.

Establishing a clear routine before students move between their classroom and other areas of the school ensures they’re aware of what is expected of them. Using clear communication, teachers explain, model, monitor and reinforce expectations for behaviour to support safe and organised movement to other areas of the school, such as to assembly or a specialist lesson.

This practice guide will help teachers teach and model self-regulated learning strategies students can apply to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of their learning.
This practice guide will help you develop your practice with a greater understanding of:

*self-regulated learning strategies students can apply to their learning
*how you can model and explicitly teach self-regulated learning techniques to help students overcome learning challenges and work towards mastery.

Staff at Parramatta Marist High School (NSW), Reece High School (Tas), Craigmore High School (SA), East Loddon P–12 (Vic), Parafield Gardens High School (SA) and Como Secondary College (WA) discuss how they involve students, their carers and the school community when implementing an MTSS framework aligned with AERO’s guidance. This work aims to reduce the risk of students feeling stigma when receiving support, which should improve engagement and impact.

Teaching practices that are aligned with how students learn are the most effective in improving education outcomes for all. There is strong evidence about the processes that occur during learning. These processes explain why some teaching practices are more effective than others. AERO has developed a model that identifies the most effective and efficient teaching practices aligned with how students learn.

Transitioning to school and between educational settings is a significant milestone for children and families. Successful transitions lead to better outcomes for children and enhance continuity of learning and development. A successful transition occurs when a child and their family feel a sense of belonging in their new environment. Educators, teachers and school and service leaders are uniquely placed to support children and families in establishing and maintaining a sense of belonging at critical transition points. The evidence-based practices presented in this guide can be used to support children’s transitions:

from before-school care to school
from school to after-school care.
It is designed to help services and schools work together to achieve more successful transitions. We recommend school and OSHC leaders set up a meeting once each term to discuss the strategies presented in this guide and make a plan for the following term.

This evidence summary supports AERO’s practice guide for transitions between school and outside school hours care (OSHC). It describes the evidence base behind the guides, synthesising insights from available research to connect to policy and practice.

This summary is derived from a systematic review conducted with our partners at Monash University and with support from the National Outside School Hours Service Alliance (NOSHSA), in May 2022, using the Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher et al., 2009).

Transitioning to school and between educational settings is a significant milestone for children and families. Successful transitions lead to better outcomes for children and enhance continuity of learning and development. A successful transition occurs when a child and their family feel a sense of belonging in their new environment. Educators, teachers and school and service leaders are uniquely placed to support children and families in establishing and maintaining a sense of belonging at critical transition points. You can use the evidence-based practices presented in this guide to support children with disability or developmental delay as they transition to their first year of school. It is designed to help services and schools work together to achieve more successful transitions.

This evidence summary supports AERO’s practice guide for transitions to school for children with disability or developmental delay. It describes the evidence base behind the guides, synthesising insights from available research to connect to policy and practice. This evidence summary is derived from a systematic review conducted with our partners at Monash University in May 2022 using the Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher et al., 2009).

Staff at Mount Rowan Secondary College (Vic), Parafield Gardens High School (SA), East Loddon P–12 College (Vic), Como Secondary College (WA) and Reece High School (Tas) discuss how they track progress of students receiving literacy and numeracy intervention within an MTSS framework aligned with AERO’s guidance.