Curriculum Directions
Religious Education- “Be the change you want to see in the world”- Gandhi
Our vision states, ‘we are called to act with compassion and empathy, to respect and care for our world and for the most vulnerable’. Our focus across the school for the year is, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’. This quote will play a part in what we plan and teach the students across the RE curriculum. At St. Columba’s will endeavour to teach students about living a life like Jesus in our contemporary world, making sure we act out our faith through the care and connection we have with Sacred Heart Mission. The learning and teaching of RE follows the RE Framework, links to Horizons of Hope and Catholic Social Teachings. We aim to find everyday links to our inquiry therefore making connections to Jesus’s teachings and how we live our lives now.
As part of staff formation, Father John will join us at staff meetings once a term where we will focus on Gospel and prayer. Prayer will be our major focus for the year across the school and we hope to engage our community in these spaces. Staff will be joined by the RE leader from Catholic Education Melbourne to further develop our understanding of prayer and prayer spaces. We will develop spaces where friends and family can join us in prayer throughout the year.
Each year level will hold special class Masses and liturgies and you are all warmly invited to join us across the year at any of these events.
Mathematics
Mathematics is a powerful tool to help describe and analyse the world around us, and as such is an effective problem-solving tool. It is important that students acquire mathematical understandings through constructing their own meaning, through the increasing level of abstract complexity and exploring their own meanings and connections. At St Columba’s we believe in the importance of teaching at the point of need and differentiating the work to suit the students. Through various assessment tasks and data collection, classroom teachers identify the needs of the students and teach accordingly, allowing for fluid movement between mathematical concept areas and focus groups.
Our current School Improvement Plan places an emphasis on improving learning growth in numeracy. This year we will focus on building the foundations and multiplicative thinking required across all strands of the mathematics curriculum. We will continue to provide explicit learning for our students at their mathematical point of need according to ongoing assessment and teacher judgment. In the senior school, we will continue to offer students the opportunity to participate in APSMO Math Olympiad program. We have successfully run this for the past four years, with our students achieving excellent results. Students from years 3-6 will also have an opportunity to participate in the Australian Mathematics Competition. We will use an Inquiry approach to explore the number and then embed these skills into problem-solving.
Throughout the year the Mathematics Leader and Differentiated Support Staff will further support students and teachers by working in classrooms and attending teacher planning time. The time allocated to classrooms will be to teach small groups of students at their point of need. The time spent planning collaboratively with teachers will be to provide rich mathematical tasks and professional dialogue to support and improve student engagement and data.
Literacy
The development of language is fundamental. It is fundamental to communication, relationships, thinking, and understanding. Language is the major connecting element across the curriculum and we, therefore, not only need students to learn about language but we need to be able to teach them how to learn through language. Our beliefs about the development of oral language, reading, writing, viewing and presenting are informed by a vast variety of research into best practices. This year we are building upon and adding to the work we have done with literacy over the past few years. Some key priorities for 2020 include:
Developing students understanding of phonics, orthography, and etymology through our spelling lessons informed by Read, Write, Inc Prep - 2 and SMART Spelling in Years 3-6
Teaching writing skills, grammar, and vocabulary through the deep study of rich literature
Conferencing with students during reading and writing experiences so that we can give students feedback and help them to set goals that will assist them to progress
Giving students varied opportunities to read, write, speak and listen that allow for student’s individual needs, preferences and voice.
Ensuring comprehension skills are taught alongside decoding skills and that our learning environments support literacy development through the use of co-constructed strategy displays
An exciting initiative this year is that all classes will attend a specialist library session each week. The aim of these lessons are to promote a love of reading and books, skills needed to navigate a library and to help students develop skills needed for learning across the curriculum (e.g. research skills, self-management skills, organisational skills). Most Library sessions will be connected to a class’ specific writing, reading or unit of inquiry focus.
To support us in continuing to improve teaching and learning in English, we will be welcoming back Matt Glover, an international writing expert, and hosting an afternoon PETAA workshop on ‘Creating confident and curious writers’.
PYP
2020 marks the first year of IB PYP Candidacy for St. Columba’s. The IB PYP is both a curriculum framework and a philosophy which emphasises significant, relevant, engaging and challenging teaching and learning. While the PYP is not a discipline area, we have clear goals for what we would like to achieve during this year of candidacy. These include:
Developing a rigorous programme of inquiry using the PYP framework
Ensuring our programme of inquiry is based on rich conceptual understandings that challenge students and allows for the development of skills and knowledge
Embedding the IB learner profile into our school culture
Connecting with other IB PYP schools and world-class professional learning to build our capacity as teachers
Reviewing, revising and creating policies for teaching and learning
Using the IB standards and Practices to reflect on our school and drive directions for future growth
Wellbeing
Our overarching goal in Wellbeing throughout 2020 is to support and encourage our students to flourish in a contemporary world.
Each year we have a school wide focus with 2020 being ‘International Mindedness’.
Each term we have a different SEL (social emotional learning) focus where students are taught explicit skills. Term 1 is looking at Relationships.
We will continue to work on communication and parent engagement to deepen the understanding of student wellbeing. Students achieve more at school when parents are involved in their education.
This year we are providing more ways to enhance opportunities for student voice and leadership across the school.
We know how important it is to offer extra - curricular opportunities. Lunchtime clubs will be running which includes Lego, Chess and board games, library, 5/6 kids gym and soccer. Years 3 - 6 will have the opportunity to spend Friday lunch breaks at Point Ormond throughout the year on a rotational basis. St. Columba’s Snow Team will be up and running again this year. Drama sessions will begin in term 2.
St. Columba’s Kids continues giving students the chance to develop friendships with other children across the school. They are placed in multi - age groups and meet twice a term.
Mindfulness is an important part of each day and time is set aside after recess or lunch to develop these skills.
This year we will have our Community Arts program running in term 3. If any parent would like to be involved in our Wellbeing program at St. Columba’s we would welcome your contribution.