Learner Agency at Princes Hill SC

At PHSC, the learner agency project was conducted with a Year 7 Humanities class. It was designed around the topic of Ancient Worlds and Early Civilisations -Ancient Rome.

Students completed a pre-project survey that asked them about their learning, what they valued and the types of tasks/activities they enjoyed. From this, it was clear that a mix of styles were in the room. Many students indicated they liked to work on lots of short but connected activities, but some identified that they liked to work on a sustained project that they could focus deeply on.

As a result, I developed a booklet that contained activities for each of the curriculum areas that students were required to learn about, as well as some consolidation activities that allowed students to synthesise their knowledge of the smaller sections into one big project.

After designing some activities, I showed them to the students, and they were happy with the direction, and also liked the fact they could negotiate their own activities if they were particularly keen to learn about something or express their knowledge a certain way.

I had trouble designing marking criteria that could be applied to so many tasks, and sought advice from some of my colleagues. I eventually adapted some of the activities to contain specific directive verbs that ranged in complexity according to mark value (e.g. outline v. analyse). I also explained this to the class, and asked them to help develop marking criteria with me. They were able to develop criteria that discriminated according to complexity. They handed in criteria in a few formats, and I used both formats in the final product.

The task was completed over 6-7 weeks, and all students completed the activity. Surprisingly, many more students selected a 'consolidation' activity than indicated in their pre-project surveys.