Curriculum

Primary Years Program at GGLPS

GGLPS teaches the Australian curriculum using the Primary Years Program (PYP) of the International Baccalaureate as a framework to impart this. There are many different aspects to the Teaching and Learning program of the school and these are some of the rich learning experiences in which the students are involved.

Reporting

By now, all families will have received their children’s first-semester progress report. As communicated in last week’s cluster newsletters, the written reports are just one of the ways in which we report on student work. 

 

From time to time, parents have asked questions such as: What should we be looking for and considering when reading my child’s report? It is a great question and some answers are:

  • Remember that when a child receives ‘satisfactory’, it means that they are working at their year level. Teachers assess students against the Australian Curriculum standard and they use this when considering the knowledge, understanding and skills that students have gained in a learning area. Achieving satisfactory means your child is exactly where they need to be.
  • A student may receive a partial or minimal for a variety of reasons. We aim to provide evidence of every child’s learning. In the case of a below year level standard, we want parents and students to understand the ways they can work to improve their learning. Please talk to your child’s teacher if you need more information about this.
  • An important part of our reporting is informing students and parents of the effort the teacher sees a student put into their work. Some children find specific areas of learning difficult and while their effort may be extremely high, they may not be at that year level. There may be underlying reasons for this, or a child may need more time to practise a skill or understand a concept. A high effort grade shows a growth mindset and indicates they are doing their best.

A change to this year’s report has been in the final page. In previous years, we reported on the PYP attitudes. With some changes to the PYP, these attitudes are no longer a distinct part of the programme. For this reason, we have begun reporting on the ‘Approaches to Learning’ which are the skills your child brings to the classroom every day. This sounds like a great topic for the next newsletter. Stay tuned!

 

Jayne Zadow                                                                                                                                                  PYP Coordinator