From Learning Enrichment Co-Ordinator Primary

Primary Curriculum Update

It has been great to catch up with so many of our families this week to discuss our students' learning and to look at our goals for the coming school year.

This year there are new curriculums for English and Mathematics for our K to 2 students and over the next few years there will be a number of new curriculums implemented in NSW schools. We will be working closely with schools across the diocese to ensure our students have access to great resources and lessons engage them.

One focus this year has been on delivering a new Mathematics Scope and Sequence for our K to 6 classes. The design of the new lessons are based on the latest research utilising  many of the principles of High Impact Teaching Practices HITP and Low Variance Curriculum. There is a lot of ongoing Professional Development for our staff in these areas. We were also fortunate to have two of our Primary staff, Cristal Dinwoodie and Debbie Cummings, involved with the development of the lessons. 

Included in the lessons are Daily Reviews that go over and reinforce skills and knowledge the students already have learned. They have materials for explicit teaching of new concepts and built into the design are opportunities for ongoing checks for understanding to monitor the progress of the students.

The Scope and Sequence has the topics interleaved. This means that rather than study one particular skill for an extended time then testing and moving onto something else, the students circle back to each topic regularly. This helps the students to retain the knowledge and skills for a longer time and importantly over time it teaches them to identify what type of mathematical problem they are solving and what strategies they will need to solve the problem. Rather than just being told they are working on subtraction this week they will look at a range of topics and learn to know when to use different strategies.