Student: So democracy versus communism. First of all, let’s get down to the basics.

Woman: Because we do learning symposiums and children learn how to use their voice, you can see the confidence that they can speak with in front of a large group. But it’s about more than that. Children are learning how to question. That if you’re going to say something, you need to be able to back it up.

Student: When you delivered that portion, you didn’t really have any facts and evidence.

Jennie: The mission of Wooranna Park is to empower students so that they start to see their potential, their uniqueness. Don’t ever take the low expectations, but reach the high altitudes that you never thought you’d ever reach. In a learning symposium, students develop public speaking skills and learn the art of questioning.

Kim: Students are presenting their research, but it’s about more than that. It’s about sharing what you have discovered with a group of people who are not going to be passive in their listening.

Filippos: We can ask questions. We can interrogate people. We can give them suggestions.

Tess: It’s more of a interactive way than just giving a talk.

Jennie: When it works well, the audience should learning something and the presenters should learn something.

Jennie: Welcome to the learning symposium. I hope everybody’s ready with lots of questions to help Jara and Tess.

Tess: This was the first week I’ve presented with Jara our turtle project.

Tess: So turtles aren’t social animals. They are very independent until they migrate or when they need to mate.

Tess: It was a bit nerve-wracking, but everyone’s so supportive when you do it.

Jara: most people get confused about turtles and tortoises. Turtles swim and float.

Tess: Tortoises don’t float; they sink. [laughter]

Filippos: In learning symposiums, we’ve got different roles in the audience. So we have verifiers researching if it’s accurate or not and if it’s not accurate, they can orange card it.

Student: On your slide, it says more turtles can live up to 50 years. Large turtles actually can live more than 150 years.

Student: As a presenter, when I see an orange card, I used to think, oh, I’m going to get judged. But then, now, I realize it’s a way to learn.

Jara: Secretary, can you just write that down, please?

Student: If you’re hearing secretary, write that down, that’s a good thing, in a way. Because you’re actually learning more.

Filippos: Do you know anything about litter that is affecting the turtles?

Tess: Yeah. The turtle eats plastic, you can’t save them. Or– so, oil pollution is
one of the big factors.

Jennie: The interrogation actually is a helpful tool. It’s a way of cultivating questioning processes, the ability to listen, build on people’s knowledge. And it’s a way of opening up new windows.

Tess: I would really love to go deeper with finding more about how rubbish pollutes and affects the turtles. With the research process, it’s an ongoing task.

Woman: Throughout the year, we do workshops and target teaching sessions on research skills, referencing.

Student: Probably the best website is dot gov.

Kim: I would say that that is a good indicator, but you still need those other two sources to back it up.

Tess: I think that we’re learning life skills. You know, having all this knowledge
and feeling passionate about things.

Kim: One of the benefits of learning symposiums, through that, repeated opportunities to stand in front of the group. It’s just very confidence-building.
It really is not about having to know everything. It’s about knowing when you don’t
know and you need to find out more. You can learn not just off the teacher;
you can learn off each other. [Applause]

Schools That Work

Wooranna Park Primary School