St.Mary's School

Curriculum Definition

Curriculum at St. Mary's School Avondale achieves the educational goals of the school by providing a plan for learning which helps us to design and implement teaching and learning based on the life experiences and aspirations of our students.


St. Mary's School provides a comprehensive and balanced curriculum developed to challenge students and provide them with the opportunity to reach their potential during their primary education.

Priorities for St. Mary's School are in literacy and numeracy and Religious Education. St. Mary's School also places a priority on learning enrichment, which includes special needs programmes such as Reading Recovery and Special Needs Classes and the CWSA programme for students who are exceptionally bright.

The delivery of our curriculum is of quality that encourages children, enthusing them to be creative, divergent and successful. A skill-based curriculum will enable children to acquire knowledge that allows them to process ideas and information, building a healthy self-esteem that is conducive to successful future learning.

St Mary's School Avondale delivers a curriculum that meets the needs of the children attending this school, with a focus on raising children's achievement and addressing disparities. Our delivery of the curriculum meets the goals and objectives of the Charter and the National Curriculum Statements. The values and knowledge of Catholic Character will permeate all programmes.

Literacy

St Mary's School Avondale is committed to providing English programmes which will meet the needs of its diverse learners in the best way possible. The school is based on religious values and ethics, and language teaching and learning will be influenced by these principles.

St Mary's caters for a diversity of English speakers ranging from those who are non-English speaking through to those with well developed levels of English and can use it fluently. To ensure that programmes reflect the best of current theory and practice the following characteristics will underpin English teaching and learning:

  • A sound understanding of how learners learn to use and understand different forms of language
  • An expectation that all students will be successful learners
  • Language programmes based on the inter-relationship oral, visual written language
  • Teaching that promotes the selection and use of effective students strategies
  • Teaching that takes account of students` Linguistic and cultura backgrounds
  • A range of explicit and implicit instructional strategies – selected to respond to each student's needs, e.g. questioning
  • Regular, systematic and purposeful monitoring of each learner's progress and student strategies, with the information used to :inform further teaching
  • Provide feedback to students
  • Help set appropriate, specific and challenging goals
  • Strong links between home and school

Numeracy

The values and knowledge of Catholic Character will permeate the Math programme. The mathematics programme provides opportunities for students to become numerate through:
  • Instant recall of basic facts
  • Understanding of place value
  • Being able to apply the four operations correctly to everyday situation
  • Mathematical learning everyday

Other Learning Areas

Social Studies , Science, Health and PE, The Arts , Maori and Technology at St Mary's School Avondale is not learned in isolation and cannot be considered by itself. All other learning areas are taught as part of the Special Catholic Character of the school. The Special Catholic Character of Catholic schools require that all areas of the curriculum are to be taught from a Catholic perspective. The integration of all subjects with other curriculum area occurs at all opportunities.

Information and Communication Technology

The school computer suite comprises 22 workstations with 19- inch flat screen monitor, a data projector, an interactive whiteboard. We also have mobile laptops with wireless internet access. Each teacher has a laptop computer and quite an array of peripherals. The school is networked and has broadband internet access. All classrooms have computers.

For students, ICT assists them in the development of 21st-century knowledge and skills including media literacy, critical and systems thinking, problem solving, collaboration, self-direction, awareness, and civic literacy. Students will be familiar with basic and advanced 21st-century information and communications technology (ICT) usage skills including word processing, online collaboration, internet research, multimedia production, etc. ICT will improve student access to information- giving student's access to wider content through intranet and Internet connectivity.