Thoughtfully planned teaching structures and practices allow our students to thrive academically, socially and emotionally.
Classes are divided into four teaching teams. The Foundation year is run as a straight year level and the remainder of the school function as composite classes. The structure is:
Foundation
Years One and Two
Years Three and Four
Years Five and Six
We place a lot of emphasis on teachers functioning in effective teams with all teams having a designated team leader. Although all students are assigned to a home group teacher, the learning and wellbeing of all of the students becomes the responsibility of the teaching team. We have designed the timetable to ensure teachers have blocks of time together to plan, assess, evaluate and report student learning.
Changes to the teaching spaces in recent years have been designed to allow us to function in a way that supports our philosophy. It is common for students to be working in spaces within their teams beyond their home classroom, being taught by teachers other than their classroom teacher. There is a healthy mix of direct instruction and open-ended inquiry. We take pride in our detailed tracking of student learning and then use of this to design rich tasks that are at the appropriate point of need for the individual student.
Effective teamwork between teachers has resulted in consistency of teaching practice across classrooms and our students’ results over the past several years shows the success of this approach.
When you read the overviews from the teaching teams you will get a sense of consistency in how we work that does vary slightly as the students move through the school. This is quite deliberate as we understand that students learn differently depending upon their age and this should be reflected in the teaching spaces, the teaching and the tasks the students are undertaking.
All teachers are happy to articulate the what, the how and the why of their teaching if you wish to ask.