Fostering confidence and engagement in

learning
Using High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS) to engage and support the learning of
students who have been impacted by community level trauma.
This resource was developed in response to requests from teachers in bushfire-impacted communities for
practical classroom strategies to support students who may have experienced community-level trauma.
Schools and teachers play a significant role in students' lives following a disaster by re-establishing routines
and providing a sense of safety, security and belonging. Students may experience difficulties with
concentration and memory following a natural disaster, and this factsheet provides information on how using
HITS can support learning for these students.
If you notice changes in your students that are a concern, please follow your school's wellbeing referral
pathways to seek additional advice or support.

Structuring Lessons – HITS recap:

Structured lessons support learners through predictable, purposeful routines
with clear transitions between learning steps. Sound lesson structures reinforce
routines, scaffold learning via specific steps/activities. They optimise time on
task and classroom climate by using smooth transitions. Planned sequencing of
teaching and learning activities stimulates and maintains engagement by linking
lesson and unit learning.
This strategy is demonstrated when the teacher:
• explains to students the steps in the lesson, including presenting learning intentions,
explicitly presenting new knowledge, identifying planned opportunities for practice, outlining
questioning techniques the class will use, and describing the assessment formats
• makes clear connections between the learning goals, activities and assessments tasks
• creates transparent, predictable and purposeful routines for students
• identifies and employs clear transitions between each step in the lesson
• plans the sequences of steps to scaffold student learning
• monitors student understanding and provides feedback.

Trauma informed practice

Promoting predictability and consistency in lesson planning
Attentiveness to student wellbeing and engagement is foundational to ensuring that students have
an opportunity to learn. Significant change and/or traumatic events can create a marked disruption
to learning continuity and student wellbeing. There are valuable classroom practices that can help
to manage the effects of trauma, by fostering supportive and responsive learning environments
where students feel safe. It is important to consider the ways in which the regular routines for
learning can be established and maintained for students, while allowing opportunities for students
to exercise choice around their engagement and the types of tasks that they undertake.

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When structuring lessons, make a plan to foster a sense of safety with your class of learners. One
way to do this is by promoting predictability and consistency in lessons, such as through regular
daily schedules and routines. Not knowing what is coming next can put students on high alert,
especially students who have experienced bushfires or other potentially traumatic events.
Where possible, prepare students ahead of time if there are changes to the usual day or lesson
routine. Clear communication to students conveys confidence and can assist with keeping
students calm and assured. Even if a change like the weather is going to impact plans, it is
valuable to let students know ahead of time. In this instance teachers might say, ‘We are going to
have break in doors today because of the rain,’ or ‘School access to YouTube isn't working so we
won't be watching a geography video at the end of class today’.
Creating an overall feeling of safety
Peer behaviours in the classroom can feel unpredictable to students who have experienced
trauma. Whilst it can be challenging to influence peer behaviours, with well-structured lessons,
students are likely to display more predictable behaviours when clear about tasks and procedures.
Another key consideration is teacher behaviour – do students understand the expectations and
expected behaviours involved in a particular session?
For example, if students are working independently and quietly, they may not know when they
should next anticipate an adult interaction or attention. Make explicit the ways of working and the
dispositions that support the kinds of activities students are doing to help learners with transitioning
between peer and teacher interactions. Predictability is comforting to students with anxiety and
trauma histories, and some students may resort to getting the teacher's attention through
disruptive behaviour to prompt a predictable and quick response from a teacher.
Where ‘free time’ might be employed as part of a session, it is important to limit or manage this
time. For instance, the length and frequency of breaks or periods of ‘free time’ may need to be
adjusted dependent upon environmental factors and/or student behaviours. When planning
lessons consider the mix of organised and less organised activities and the balance of supports
students may require.
Through carefully established routines and well-structured lessons teachers will be providing
predictable positive feedback to students contributing to a sense of safety. For example, consider
how you communicate with your learners during independent work time. If a teacher says to a
student ‘Great work! I'll be back to check on you,’ the student is not able to predict when the
teacher will return at any point. When using predictable positive attention, the teacher can say, ‘I
will check in on you in 10 minutes,’ include a timer in the classroom, and add, ‘I will check in when
the timer goes off.’ Students will then have confidence in the next steps and feel more settled. If
there are many students in the class that could benefit from this, transfer the strategy to small
groups.

Flexibility in structuring lessons to support engagement

You can create multiple opportunities for students to engage with the learning content through
blended learning models in the classroom, including flipped lessons and mini lessons. Approaches
such as these will support students to engage with manageable amounts of new learning content
and privilege time for practice. Within these lessons you can facilitate groups of students and/or
individual learning through different methods including:
• face-to-face small group direct instruction with the teacher,
• paired collaboration using worked examples and success criteria

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 • asynchronous digital activities, utilising explicit instruction through embedded videos (pre-
recorded by the teacher/s or using curated videos in which reflective questions or practice
activities have been inserted),
Using video and digital activities, available through the school portal or a platform such as Google
Classroom will support learners to reference or return to the content as needed, reducing the
cognitive load whilst learning new skills, and building their independence through an augmented
gradual release method.
These approaches support a breadth of learners by allowing learners to review new content and
skills as required and support a range of learners who may be engaging with school and in class
learning at different capacities.
Learners may be feeling high levels of instability and their connection to school and peers may be
impacted. It is important to be attentive to learners engagement, contributions and learning needs
as they progress through a unit of work.
Making transparent the learning goals, effectively differentiating the learning for individual learners
and outlining the explicit steps for success is important to both the teacher student relationship and
the pedagogical strategies for learning.
Structuring Lessons Resources HITS Catalogue Resources - FUSE

Principles of Instruction: Research Based https://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/?F4TPF4

Strategies that Every Teachers Should Know

Flipped Learning: What is it? https://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/?JQ7QYL

Flipped Learning: What if they don't watch? https://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/?DJND8K

Further resources on supporting students who have experienced community-level

trauma
• DET Managing Trauma Guide
• Resources for Teachers: School Recovery Tool Kit
• Emerging Minds: Community Trauma Toolkit
• The National Child Traumatic Stress Network: A Trauma Toolkit for Educators
• The University of Melbourne: 10 Years Beyond Bushfires report

References
High Impact Teaching Strategies Guide
https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/school/teachers/support/high-impact-teaching-
strategies.pdf

Education Law Centre. Unlocking the Door to Learning: Trauma Informed Classrooms and
Transformational Classrooms. https://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Trauma-
Informed-in-Schools-Classrooms-FINAL-December2014-2.pdf

Perfect, M.M., Turley, M.R., Carlson, J.S., Yohanna, J., & Saint Gilles, M.P. (2016). School-related
outcomes of traumatic event exposure and traumatic stress symptoms in students: A systematic
review of research from 1990 to 2015. School Mental Health, 8, 7-43.