The Learning Zone

Welcome back to another year of learning at St Mary of the Angels. As we work together to support your child's learning, a great question that parents and carers can ask their child after school is what did you learn today? This is powerful, as it allows your child to focus on the learning that took place during the day and explain their understanding to you. A focus on their learning supports our 'Living Well, Learning Well Framework' and will assist them in seeing that they are growing in their learning. 

We ask the five questions for learning regularly and it is a great tool for parents to use at home when discussing the learning that has occured at school that day. 

 Best Start

On Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th February, our Early Stage 1 students completed their Best Start Assessments. This assessment checks early literacy and numeracy skills and the results will determine student learning needs.  Early Stage One parents will also receive feedback on ways they can support their child’s learning at home.

Armidale Diocesan Mathematics Initiative (MaST)

This Year SMOTA continues on its MaST journey across Early Stage One to Stage 3. We saw great results across all stages last year and educators look forward to supporting students in their continual growth in the Maths space. 

Stage 1 has been learning all about 2D shapes through lots of hands on activities to cement their understanding. Group A has been exploring the properties of shapes and learning about sides and vertices whilst Group B has been learning about the orientation of shapes and how to identify polygons. Although the young people have only just started this unit it has been fantastic to see their understanding grow.  The young people really enjoyed the challenge of creating new shapes using different shape tiles.