Learning & Teaching Policy


Rationale

 

Essex Heights Primary School offers a comprehensive differentiated curriculum to cater for the diverse needs and different stages of development of all our students. We develop and extend students’ knowledge, skills and thinking, embrace their passions and provide the students with choice and challenge. We at Essex Heights embrace a student-centred approach, in partnership with parents and guardians.

 

Guidelines

 

The school will:

 

  • provide a learning environment that is supportive and productive.
  • create a learning environment that promotes independence, interdependence and self-motivation.
  • ensure students’ needs, backgrounds, perspectives and interests are reflected in the learning program.
  • challenge and support students to develop deep levels of thinking and application.
  • implement assessment practices which are an integral part of teaching and learning.
  • connect learning with the local and broader community.
  • develop a range of communication, negotiation, conflict resolution and cooperative
  • teamwork skills.·

 

Implementation

 

  • The Curriculum is differentiated using the Victorian Essential Learning continua and Bloom’s and Gardener’s framework to cater for individual differences.
  • Thinking is taught explicitly and applied across the curriculum through a whole school scope and sequence and utilising a variety of approaches, including Habits of Mind.
  • A whole school approach is actively undertaken to create a learning community that promotes the social and emotional wellbeing of our students. Students are explicitly taught the skills and applications of the four foundations for achievement: Confidence, Getting Along, Persistence and Organisation which are underpinned by resilience and Emotional Intelligence.
  • ICT skills, techniques and applications using new media and technologies are taught explicitly and embedded in learning programs to engage students and create new knowledge and understandings.
  • Assessment as, for, and of learning is designed to monitor and support student learning; catering for individual learning styles, modalities and preferred intelligences. Students are encouraged to become meta-cognitive learners.
  • The school, in acknowledging that curriculum is dynamic, will be responsive to research developments and initiatives, such as the National Curriculum.
  • The Leadership Team, including the Curriculum Coordinator, together with staff will ensure that regular Professional Development is available to support staff individual and team learning goals in developing exemplary classroom practice. New learning theory and initiatives will be incorporated where appropriate and suited to the school’s needs.

 

Evaluation

 

This policy will be reviewed as part of the school’s review cycle.

 

Andrew Crossett         James Fitzpatrick

 

Principal                   School Council President

 

School Council - November 2011