St Clare's Catholic Primary School

A Community of Faith & Learning. Uniting, Serving, Empowering.

~ Your Light in Our Hands ~

LEARNING & TEACHING

OUR MOTTO: 'YOUR LIGHT IN OUR HANDS'

At St Clare’s learning is relevant and connected through our Catholic faith, where scripture and the teachings of Jesus align with knowledge acquisition and the application of skills to create new learning and understandings, and explicit links across the curriculum.

We follow a personalised approach to learning with clearly defined Learning and Teaching Design Principles that guide all our endeavours.

“Personalisation is about the whole child, about building the capacity and appetite for learning across society.”

Charles Leadbeater

LEARNING & TEACHING DESIGN PRINCIPLES

In personalising the learning for our community of students we focus on building success for all. Pre-assessments and ongoing formative assessment target starting points for learning and monitor the progress of each student. Learning intentions are explicitly stated in student friendly language and success criteria give clarity to the achievement of the intentions. The implementation of varied teaching strategies and activities promotes engagement and challenge and encourages independence and self regulation as students make informed choices about their learning. Student voice and the opportunity to set goals and reflect on learning fosters ownership and builds partnerships across the school and wider community.

(Hargreaves, D 2004, Personalising Learning: Next Steps in Working Laterally)

At St Clare’s we foster independence and self regulation.

Learning is a consequence of thinking. With this in mind several points guide us:

Thinking is not only a matter of skills but also a matter of dispositions.
We foster open-mindedness, collaboration, curiosity, flexibility, persistence, independence, imagination and resilience.
The development of thinking is a social process. We provide balance between individual and group interactions and encourage the sharing of ideas and expertise.
Thinking is visible. Students and leaders of learning articulate, document and track their thinking.
The culture within our learning areas sets the tone for learning and shapes what is learned.
Our school has a culture of thinking and reflection.

OPEN LEARNING SPACES

PREP

YEAR 1

YEAR 2

YEAR 3

YEAR 4

YEAR 5 & 6

At St Clare’s open learning spaces are reflective of our educational philosophy where students learn through collaboration, self management and challenge. The learning spaces enable flexibility, student choice, rich dialogue, integration of curriculum and more individualised and small group instruction. Moreover the spaces are reflective of our contemporary society and support relevant and targeted learning. Learning is a social process and our approach provides opportunities for student access to a broad range of perspectives and expertise as well as building personal and interpersonal skills central to living in our modern society.

SCHOOL LIBRARY

SPECIALIST