HITS (High Impact Teaching Strategies) and HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Strategies) is an essential teaching reference.

This resource can be used in conjunction with Bounce Back!, a positive education approach to wellbeing, resilience and social-emotional learning.

Evidence based teaching and social and emotional learning is an integral aspect of the Australian Curriculum, as is ongoing professional teacher development. This is a practical resource from well-known authors Helen McGrath and Toni Noble based on extensive educational research which encourages student engagement, learning and social development.

Teachers
HITS and HOTS will support primary, secondary and tertiary teachers at every career stage. HITS and HOTS provide a toolbox of highly engaging teaching strategies that beginning teachers can use with confidence. For experienced teachers, this resource can add to the HITS and HOTS they are already using and suggest new ways to use them in the classroom.

School Leaders
For school leaders this resource provides a professional learning opportunity to enhance teacher skills and knowledge of evidence based teaching strategies. A sustained focus on HITS and HOTS can be supported by coaching, modelling, peer observation and feedback to ensure the establishment of a professional learning community where there is widespread use of evidence based teaching strategies in the school.

Professional Learning Communities
Teachers sharing how they have implemented different HITS and HOTS can foster a powerful collaborative approach to effective teaching and learning across a whole school which can build teacher capacity and improve student achievement.

Toni Noble is the co-developer of the Bounce Back! program. Toni is a leading educator and educational psychologist with expertise in student wellbeing, positive school communities and positive psychology. She is Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University.

Toni has worked with the government on a number of initiatives including as the principal investigator on the Australian government’s Scoping Study on Student Wellbeing and co-developer of the National Safe Schools Framework as well as resourcing the Safe Schools Framework, now the Student Wellbeing Hub.

Helen McGrath is the co-developer of the Bounce Back! program. She is currently an Adjunct Professor in both the School of Education at Deakin University and the School of Education at RMIT University. Helen also has a part time private psychology practice in Melbourne. She was a co-developer of the National Safe Schools Framework & the Safe Schools Hub and the lead developer of the eSmart cybersafety framework. She is also a member of the National Centre Against Bullying.

• Step-by-step instructions for over 50 high-impact teaching strategies, higher order thinking strategies, educational games and quizzes.
• Each strategy, game and quiz has built in opportunities to practise social and emotional learning and improve teamwork.
• Online resources, games and activities for the IWB.

Hits and Hots help students to:

• Construct meaning from text and other sources.
• Understand and apply their learning.
• Think critically and creatively.
• Consider different perspectives (individual, community, global).
• Make decisions.
• Solve problems.
• Transfer and apply their learning to different subjects, contexts and real-world problems.

The strategies meet the challenge of teaching in the twenty-first century by teaching general student capabilities such as literacy, critical and creative, thinking skills, personal and social capabilities and ethical and intercultural understandings.

• Part A Introduction
• Part B HITS: High Impact Teaching Strategies
• Part C HOTS: Higher Order Thinking Strategies
• Part D Games and Quizzes
• Part E Teaching Social Skills

The accompanying online resources contain:

• Student instructions
• Blackline masters
• Teacher tools
• Sample games and quizzes for the interactive whiteboard