Teaching and Learning

As a MACS school, St Joseph’s is committed to implementing the MACS 2030 vision “Forming lives to enrich the world” with the strategic themes:

1.      Inspired by Faith

2.      Flourishing learners

3.      Enabled leaders.

4.      Enriched Communities.

At St Joseph's we are committed to:

English

We believe that the study of English – Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening is an ongoing process that is fundamental to all areas of the curriculum. Therefore literacy learning should be engaging, child-centred, developmental and informed by data. We believe we should enable students to become contemporary literate learners to achieve diverse life goals.

A key part of the program is the focused teaching of all aspects of English as outlined in the Victorian Curriculum (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority) through the use of spoken, written and multimodal texts. There is a specific focus on oral language and phonological development in the Prep to Year 2 area and the development of key comprehension strategies in Years 3 to 6.

We encourage an interest in and love for literature. We support children to become proficient readers who are able to use reading as a tool for lifelong learning and enjoyment.

Our program is based on the belief that improvements are achievable through a whole school approach that ensures all students make progress and achieve success. Intervention and acceleration programs are offered to students who require additional support in reading and comprehension skills. These include Reading Recovery and  Levelled Literacy Intervention

Numeracy 

All students are given opportunities to discover mathematical understandings for themselves through hands on approach. Teachers differentiate their content to cater for a range of learning needs. There is a strong emphasis on Number in the junior school in order to develop strong foundational skills and understandings required for further mathematics.

Learning Mathematics at St Joseph's is based on the Victorian Curriculum and provides students with essential mathematical skills and knowledge in the three strands of:  Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry and Statistics and Probability.

At St Joseph’s School our aim is for our students to become mathematically proficient, to know and use mathematics successfully enabling them to solve the new kinds of problems they will face in their future.

Integrated Studies

At St. Joseph’s School we use an Inquiry approach to learning across a broad curriculum. Inquiry based learning is a process that draws on a range of tools and strategies to develop thinking and research skills, collaboration, communication, independence and ownership of learning.

The context, content, skills and dispositions incorporated provide a balance between curriculum standards, real life contexts, current local and global affairs, as well as student interest.

Our Inquiry units aim to ignite curiosity and develop deep understandings about our world, how it works and our involvement in this world.

Discovery 

In the Prep, Years 1 and 2 children take part in play based and investigative learning. Literacy and Numeracy are embedded within investigations as well as explicitly taught throughout the rest of the day. The nature of play-based experiences promotes creativity, imagination and scope for children to invent, explore, create and problem solve. 

The children’s interests are the predominant means for learning experiences during investigations. The teacher works with focus children each day using their interests to extend, scaffold and support them with their investigation to ensure ongoing engagement in all areas of learning. Observation and documentation by teachers identifies key skills, needs, strengths and interests of individual children and is used to further plan and implement appropriate experiences and set further learning and developmental objectives.

Students are encouraged to search for answers to questions, create community links beyond the classroom, use technologies and develop deep understandings of the ideas embedded within the curriculum. Each term, teachers plan and implement Inquiry Unit/s, centred around broad concepts and understandings so that students will have the opportunity to develop deep questioning skills, articulation techniques and higher order thinking.