Curriculum- Teaching and Learning
Upwey South Primary School
School Wide Teaching and Learning
In each edition of our school newsletter, we share with our community an insight into the curriculum being taught within our classrooms. This reflects our school's strong focus upon continuous improvement.
Each edition covers a different area of the curriculum, and is supported by our school-wide approaches to teaching and learning.
In this edition we focus upon providing you an overview of what has been occurring across our Inquiry curriculum.
What has been the key to the success achieved across our school in recent years?
With schools now open again to external visitors, we are getting more and more school leaders making contact with our school to conduct a "learning walk". This is just fancy edu-speak (education lingo) for walking through a school to look at a particular aspect of a school's culture/ curriculum/ climate.
With our DET School Review due to occur in Term Three of this year, as a staff we are deep into the process of reflecting upon school goals and achievements; both short and long-term.
The following article is what was utilized by our School Leadership Team to structure our school as it is today. We can't wait for our review, to see what we can achieve next...
Overcoming the Odds: An Australian Context
Students from disadvantaged social backgrounds perform worse on average academically than more advantaged students. This study investigated Australia’s top-performing disadvantaged schools in terms of literacy and numeracy results, with the aim of finding any common policies and practices which have led to their success.
Nine top-performing disadvantaged schools were visited by a researcher for this study, involving interviews with school principals and staff, and observations of literacy and numeracy lessons. These schools do not receive more funding than other similarly disadvantaged schools.
Six common themes were found across the nine schools:
- School discipline.
- Direct and explicit instruction.
- Experienced and autonomous school leadership.
- Data-informed practice.
- Teacher collaboration and professional learning.
- Comprehensive early reading instruction.
These six consistent themes indicate how disadvantaged primary schools could potentially improve significantly, without necessarily requiring more taxpayer funding.