Macgregor Primary School has fully implemented the Australian Curriculum. Details about each of these learning areas and the General Capabilities can be found at the following website: Australian Curriculum website
Educators at Macgregor have used a filtering tool to break down the achievement standards and indicators from the Australian Curriculum, into Power Standards; these are essential learnings, building blocks for future years of education, and are part of the guaranteed curriculum at the school. Power standards are shared with the students and aid in the setting of Learning Intentions and Success Criteria for all lessons. They are directly reported against at both mid and end of year formal reports, as well as within the term 3 learning journey and in individual student portfolios.
Assessment and Reporting to Parents
As stated in the Education Directorate's Reporting Policy, 'effective teaching and learning requires that timely, meaningful and comprehensive information on student achievement and progress is provided to students and parents to promote effective home/school partnerships in support of student learning.'
Reporting should foster partnerships between parents and teachers to support a student's learning and progress. Macgregor uses a range of formal reporting strategies, all of which reflect student achievement in relation to the curriculum, both academic and non-academic, as well as their social development. These include:
- Mid semester progress report (term 1)
- End of semester summative reports. (terms 2 and 4)
- End of semester A-E grade for each subject (except preschool and kindergarten)
- Portfolios of annotated work samples. (terms 2 and 4)
- Learning Journeys (term 3)
- Parent-teacher interviews (following semester one reports). (start of term 3)
In addition to these school based reports, students in kindergarten will receive Performance Indicators in Primary School (PIPS) testing results at the start and end of their kindergarten year. This will indicate growth in both reading and in numeracy throughout the year.
Students in years 3 and 5 will also participate in National Assessment and Performance in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) testing, which provide parents and schools with a quick snap shot of how a student is performing against other students (their age) across Australia.
The key purpose of reporting is to support student learning by providing information to students and parents about student achievement and progress, and to indicate areas for further development.
Literacy
Through learning English students learn to listen, read and view, speak, write and create texts using standard Australian English with accuracy, fluency and purpose. All teachers at Macgregor have the responsibility to support students to acquire the essential knowledge, understandings and skills in English that they will require for active, informed participation in school and beyond (using the Australian Curriculum or Early Years Learning Framework). The Learning Area of English is about making sense of diverse human experiences, representing experiences in real and imagined worlds, and developing understandings of texts and language, and their aesthetic value. To do this, students need opportunities to interpret and construct literary and non-literary texts, considering purpose, audience and textual features. Literary texts create imaginative worlds and tell stories of cultures and communities. Non-literary texts describe, explain, instruct and persuade.
Students need opportunities to understand, appreciate, respond to and create these texts in the English program. They also need opportunities to understand textual features and how these are used within English texts and within other subject areas.
Numeracy
Through learning mathematics students learn to use understandings and language of number, measurement, algebra, space, and chance and data to think, reason, create, investigate, reflect and communicate mathematically.
All teachers at Macgregor Primary School have the responsibility to program and plan for students to acquire the essential knowledge, understandings and skills in mathematics that they will require for active, informed participation in school and beyond. Mathematics is an integral and highly valued component of the curriculum. Students identify and explore mathematics concepts (using the Australian Curriculum or Early Years Learning Framework) through active investigation of real-life situations involving mathematics. They understand that mathematics can help them to make meaning of their world.
When learning about mathematics, students recognise that there are particular ways of working with concepts in mathematics. Students also recognise that there are particular facts and procedures required for knowing and understanding in mathematics. Students and teachers value mathematics as a way of investigating, thinking, reasoning and relating to real-life situations.
Pedagogical Approach
Each teacher ensures that they teach Literacy and Numeracy systematically where they build upon strong foundational skills. Explicit teaching occurs through classroom activities like Count Me In too, Middle Years Mental Computation, Writers Workshop and Guided Reading. These programs lay the foundational skills that students will build upon. This explicit teaching recognises that learning is a cumulative process where teachers build upon previous skills and knowledge. Research evidence supports a need for learners to master core skills in reading, writing and numeracy before higher-order learning can effectively occur. It is critical that teachers systematically deliver basic skills, and teaching skills in the right sequence so that students master the building blocks of skills in Literacy and Numeracy
Explicit teaching ensures that students have clear instructions on what is expected of them, and what it is that they need to learn from the specific task (often identified through the learning intention). Teachers ensure that students are given time to engage with the learning process effectively, ask questions and are given thorough and clear feedback.
Explicit teaching at Macgregor Primary School includes identification of the learning intentions and success criteria, and making these transparent to the students. The focus is on telling students what they will be learning, and being clear about the purpose of tasks. Teachers demonstrate or explain new ideas, and check that students understand. Teachers then give time for asking and answering questions, then assess and confirm whether students understand what they are learning before progressing. Teachers explicitly review learning and explain how it contributes to more complex, skills.
School curriculum expectations
When programming, teachers at Macgregor Primary School:
*Identify students’ prior knowledge, skills and understanding through pre-testing and analysis of existing data
*Use the Australian Curriculum and Early Years Learning Framework for learning
*Program for the year, term, week and day
*Use agreed models of Explicit Teaching incorporating the gradual release of responsibility and visible learning techniques
*Use the Macgregor Primary School assessment schedule and data collection guide with fidelity
*Work towards each child’s, teacher’s, school and directorate targets
*Collect evidence of student knowledge, understanding and skills in all areas
*Actively engage with, and participate in, professional learning community culture including common programming and assessment tasks, professional conversations and collaboration to deprivatise practice and moderation activities to achieve consistency in teacher judgments
*Report on student progress and provide ongoing feedback to students on their learning
*Set individualised learning goals for students through consultation with families