• having and establishing high expectations of success, by explaining what you are trying to achieve together, how you intend to get there, what a 'good result' will look and be like?

• checking whether or not your students have any hearing or vision impairment? Where such impairments exist, are procedures in place to help rectify or alleviate them? Have teaching processes been modified to take account of them?

Think about this:

Learning is derived from perception - seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling and the kinaesthetic sense, awareness of your own body, its 'place in space' and its relation to other animate and inanimate objects. These are how we derive information about the world. If one or more of these functions are impaired or, for that matter, particularly acute, assumptions about what is conventional will not apply.

Conventionally, learning at school or in training settings is heavily dependent on being able to see and hear well. The comparatively high incidence of hearing and other sensory impairment among some Indigenous children mean that these are matters for sensitive attention, with some potential modification of teaching practice and additional support for students required.

• providing intensive individual or small group support for students whose skills in reading and writing Standard Australian English (SAE) and numeracy are below conventional levels?
  
  
• teaching features of SAE explicitly and, where relevant, its differences from students' dialectal forms of English, defining and explaining them clearly? The digital materials contain a number of references and direction to resources on this issue. For example, read about the Deadly Ways to Learn Project…
  
  
• breaking what is to be learnt into achievable steps, 'scaffolding them' and teaching them specifically (providing suitable conceptual and practical tools, referring to other relevant examples where students have been successful, seeing if there is another way to look at it and so on)? For an example, read about scaffolding at Salisbury North PS…
  
  
• making regular use of the life experiences and knowledge of students to make connections with other curricular content? Have you reviewed what you are doing and using now and explored alternatives to improve the relevance of curricular to students' lives, interests, context and culture? For an example, read about Nidja Noongar Boodjar Noonook Nyininy…
  
  
• using teaching materials that deal with Indigenous cultures in an accurate and relevant way as a conventional part of the content of the curriculum?

• providing consistent opportunities for cultural reference and expression?
  
  
• providing consistent opportunities for students to work cooperatively? The one aspect of learning styles about which there appears to be some consistency among Indigenous students is the way they value and get results from working in collaboration with others. This applies, of course, to many other students.
  
  
• using a range of types of learning opportunities and media as a matter of course?