Core Activity

Room to Learn: Telling the Story of Australia’s Classrooms

For National Literacy and Numeracy Week 2011, students collaborated in a nationwide investigation of Australian classrooms with the aim of finding out:

How are we the same? How are we different?

Step 1 - Collect

For step one, students were asked to collect some facts about their classroom. To help teachers plan an activity for their age group, the following resources were made available:

Early Years Teaching Ideas

Lower Primary Teaching Ideas

Upper Primary Teaching Ideas

Junior Secondary Teaching Ideas

(Further teaching ideas including follow-up activities using the National Data are available on the more activities page).

Depending on the needs and interests of their class, teachers collected information on any or all of the following:

  • The number of people present in their classroom (students as well as teachers/teacher aides/adults)
  • The size of their classroom, measured by the perimeter and/or area, using informal and/or formal units
  • The age of their classroom
  • The view from their classroom and any special feature(s) of it

Step 2 - Record

Step two required teachers to record a summary of your data using the Data Collection Form

Step 3 - Submit

Thanks to all the teachers who submitted their data summary online. View the National Data Summary Report and compare your classroom with classrooms all over Australia.

Coordinators

Special support was made available for Coordinators through the downloadable Coordinator's Support Pack. The Support Pack contained teaching ideas for all age, suggestions for more activities, data collection forms, and promotional materials for use in school websites newsletters.