Exploring Primary's Seesaw

Seesaw has been an exceptionally useful platform over the past few years, particularly during the pandemic when we were able to assign activities to our students and ensure that high-quality teaching and learning continued during home learning. This academic year, as COVID restrictions have lifted, there will be a shift in the way we use Seesaw.

Digital portfolios
The focus for Seesaw will now be on individual student portfolios so students can showcase their learning at school.

How students are asked to show their learning can greatly affect their confidence and development. Seesaw offers multimodal ways to share learning (photo, video, collage, audio recording, drawing, writing and more). This supports all students, but especially emerging writers, bilingual learners, and students with particular learning need, as they have options for how they communicate and share their learning. This can bolster confidence and motivation and supports a more positive attitude toward themselves as learners.

A tool for reflection
When students add to their portfolios through the learning process, the focus changes from celebrating perfection to celebrating growth. This ties into our focus on having a growth mindset, understanding that mistakes are part of the learning process and St. Julian’s learning pit

In Seesaw, students can see what they used to know and compare it to where they are now. Reflection becomes a core part of the class culture. Students can use the multimodal tools within Seesaw to add layers of explanation or reflection, so they are not only showing what they know, but they are explaining how they know it.
Our students will be choosing which pieces of work to add to their Seesaw portfolio, allowing for greater student ownership. This forces each student to think about why they are choosing each item that they add - it's this metacognition that underlies the power of true reflection.

Parental involvement
Just as before, parents can log in to the Seesaw App as a family member to see their children’s work. We would love it if you could continue to write comments on the work that your child shares within Seesaw. We recommend you use TAG to give your feedback. This is in line with the pedagogy used by teachers when giving feedback to students. Sometimes you may wish to say what you liked about a piece of work, but over time, please aim to leave some constructive feedback, as this will help your child know how they can develop or improve with their learning. We hope some of these sentence starters will assist you when making constructive comments.
Louise Banthorpe
Primary Deputy Principal