Learning and Teaching

The Science of Learning with Dr Jared Cooney Horvath

Our staff were fortunate to engage with neuroscientist Dr Jared Cooney Horvath in the first week of term. We spent three days engaging in The Science of Learning, learning about how our brains work and how we can best support the learners at St Mary's. Topics explored included, The Cognitive Load Theory, our working memory and the 12 PEN Principles. Stay tuned for more updates highlighting how St Mary's is continuing to be a brain friendly school.  

Year 3

This Term, our Year 3 learners have been diving into the fascinating world of morphology, the study of how words are built. They have discovered that a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a word, and they have loved exploring how these tiny parts can make a big difference! 

Year 3 has been busy learning important suffix rules, such as dropping the 'e' before adding a suffix, the double consonant rule and adding to suffix to end of a word. They have been experimenting with adding endings like -ed and -ing, and noticing how these can change a word from present to past tense for example, from bake to baked, or hop to hopping. 

It has been wonderful to see their excitement as they uncover the building blocks of language and apply this knowledge in their reading and writing! 

Year 6

What an amazing way to kick off the new school term for our Year 6 learners with a week in Canberra! From engaging learning experiences to shared laughter and fun, it was a memorable start that we all feel lucky to have had.   Highlights from the trip included visits to the War Memorial, Questacon, the AIS, and Parliament House, with plenty of good times back at camp as well. It’s a week we hope the students will remember fondly for years to come.