TEACHING AND LEARNING

Teaching, Learning and Diversity Update

Hi everyone,

It’s an exciting time at St Agnes’! Our new learning spaces provide really exciting possibilities for innovative teaching and learning. All our staff members are committed to the school-wide goals; I’ve loved seeing the teachers engage in professional conversations and collaboration, both during our twice-weekly meetings and in those casual corridor conversations! 

Key Teaching and Learning goals for Term 2

Our school’s Annual Action Plan includes specific actions to improve practice in the Teaching and Learning space. In a nutshell, these are some of our shared foci for Term 2: 

• A whole-school Maths unit, ‘Operations and Strategies’, including targeted professional learning, shared planning and team teaching
• Continued embedding of best practice in Reading, including content-driven literature and comprehension, phonics and decoding, and flexible groupings (made even easier by our new spaces!)
• Explicit teaching of language comprehension through all areas of the Curriculum 
• Involvement in Early Number and Algebra professional learning for Years 1 and 2, with a focus on addition and subtraction
• Explicit teaching of grammar and punctuation concepts, informed by  The Writing Revolution
• Introduction of Genius Hour in Years 5 and 6, promoting inquiry-based learning

NCCD - Nationally Consistent Collection of Data 

In education, we aim to ensure each child receives the adjustments required to access the mandated Curriculum. Within each class, there’s a natural range of needs. To enable schools like ours to provide such adjustments, we submit data to NCCD in August each year, which assists governments to make funding decisions. Please see the attached document for more detailed information.

What does this look like at the school level? We run our termly PSG (Program Support Group) meetings for students with a PLP (Personalised Learning Plans), and we also keep detailed documentation of adjustments being made in planning documents. Don’t be put off by the number of acronyms (we love those in education!); the overall purpose is simply to teach each student at their point of need, with schools and teachers making decisions about the tools and adjustments required to make this possible. 

If you haven’t already had a chance to visit our new-look school, we look forward to showing you around! Here’s to a productive and fun Term 2… 

Louisa Di Pietro

Deputy Principal - Teaching, Learning and Diversity