TEACHING AND LEARNING

It is our vision and mission to support children in our school community to realise and embrace their own ability to author their own future.

Characteristics such as resilience, curiosity, empathy, gratitude underpins our work in bringing to life our vision and mission.

All traditional curriculum areas are taught at Emmaus and we, like all schools across the state follow the Victorian Curriculum. The Victorian Curriculum Foundation to Year 10 sets out what every student should learn during their first eleven years of schooling. The curriculum is the common set of knowledge and skills required by students for life-long learning, social development and active and informed citizenship.

The Victorian Curriculum F–10 incorporates the Australian Curriculum and reflects Victorian priorities and standards.

These standards are in effect a ‘curriculum package’ for schools to follow. In stating this we as schools are not obliged to teach in the same manner when presenting the curriculum. At Emmaus it is our endeavour to work towards presenting learning experiences for our children that are reflective of their individual strengths and needs. Put simply, we are doing our best to “personalise” the learning pathways of our children and have adopted three ‘gateways‘ to achieve this goal.  

1) The Creative deployment of personnel
We creatively deploy all personnel to ensure that there is a strong emphasis on well targeted, meaningful and solid instruction for all children, however, this is not the sole focus for our creative deployment of all personnel at Emmaus. It is our strongly held belief that we as a staff team need to be able to challenge and support one another to enhance our capacity as teachers. Thus we are working towards building our capacity to act as ‘critical colleagues‘ so that each and every one of us grow in our ability to address the strengths and needs of our students.

2) The Creative use of physical space
As one of the newer schools in Ballarat and district, we have been acutely aware that previously conceived and considered building structures might not be in the best learning, social and emotional interests of our students. Thus a great deal of consideration has gone into the creation of a place of learning that allows for children to be able to move and interact with one another and in doing so develop a heightened sense of independence and interdependence. A space that allows for teachers to be able to interact with students in a flexible yet effective manner and a space that allows for a variety of learning styles to be accommodated.

3) The Creative use of Information and Communications Technology 
As an officially recognised Apple Distinguished School, we prioritise the use of Apple technology as part of our digi tech program.

Students from Grade 1 - 6 use iPads in a 1:1 ratio. Students in Vornda share an iPad in a 2:1 capacity.

Our work in the digi tech space is ever evolving and changing as is the technology available to us. The challenge and the opportunity that we are presented with as a school is how we might best keep abreast with all that is available in the digi tech world whilst making critical judgements on what is most appropriate and effective in enhancing the learning pathways of our students.

In adopting these three gateways we are constantly reminded of the key question, “Why?”

The premise we work from is that there is nowhere in the world where we so clearly define what people learn according to age except in schools. A futures oriented curriculum challenges this belief and manner of teaching and learning.

Our endeavour is to work towards a new way of looking at the presentation of learning at Emmaus where the ‘grade levels’ of our children become less relevant and their needs and strengths become the measure of future learning directions.