Learning and Teaching

St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School is a community where learners can grow, not just in their academics but into people that will meet their future with love, respect, courage and kindness and make a difference to those they meet along their journey.

We achieve this with learning programs that develop the whole child through academic, emotional, physical, social and spiritual experiences. We pride ourselves on being an inclusive community where everyone feels safe, welcomed and valued. In building strong relationships with each other the learning flows and students can flourish. They then can understand the value they hold for themselves, for others and the future of our world.

St Joseph’s is a Professional Learning Community (PLC) school. This is our culture and we are working to embed this as we begin our journey together. In collaborative teams the teachers identify the essential learning elements within the English and Mathematics standards. Assessment tasks are used to measure student learning before and after a learning cycle. Student results are used to identify students’ explicit learning needs and to determine the goals they need to achieve to reach the non-negotiable level of proficiency and to be successful learners. Intensive intervention time is planned to assist students who require more instruction and learning is planned to extend those students who may already have the minimum proficiency level in place.

Being a Professional Learning Community school means we have three main focus areas:

Learning

Student learning is the central focus and our fundamental purpose is to ensure high levels of learning for all students regardless of ability. Teachers, along with students, are in a continuous zone of growth to help them to improve the outcomes of all students and reflect on what they need to do to accomplish this. Goal setting is used to drive and help promote student agency. This means students own their own learning which improves engagement and impacts on student outcomes. They know their I can goals and are supported by the teacher to work to achieve them.

Collaboration

We believe that every student deserves to have a great teacher; not by chance but by design, and that the students have the ability to learn and progress. Teachers collaborate together to find the best growth for students, guiding and supporting each other to provide the highest quality teaching. The goal of any meeting is to improve the learning outcomes of our students. We learn from each other to help ensure success. Only through collaboration can we succeed in our vision.

Results

At St Joseph’s we are data driven. We work together for the best learning outcomes for all, using evidence-based strategies that have been proven to support and promote learning. When using evidence informed teaching we are also completing our own action research to identify the best quality teaching strategies for our own students.

Our success is measured not by what or how teachers teach, but by how much students learn. We identify when students have met their learning goals and have achieved the minimum required level of proficiency. If students have not met this goal then we provide intervention to support their growth.