Learning and Teaching

Southmoor Primary School offers a caring, secure, positive and vital learning environment. The staff, school council and community proudly recognize and foster our cultural, social, intellectual and physical diversity, all of which are features of this school.

On a daily basis, our children participate in tasks with great potential to engage them in valuable learning - tasks which entail a whole range of learning processes, relationships, organizational arrangements, attitudes, values and beliefs that characterize our school.

Teaching and learning at Southmoor is:

Mission centred
Critically important
Action-based and
Empowering

Our students are immersed in:-

Inspiring environments
Students are given the opportunity to 'lead the way' & the whole community has a shared purpose and commitment to the school

1. Mission Centred - providing meaning and direction to the curriculum and daily school operations - our core purpose & uniqueness

Southmoor Primary aspires to develop children who are positive contributors to our global community, with a passion for life-long learning and a respect for the environment, ready with the skills and motivation to take positive action in caring for our planet.

Our purpose as a team is to provide all our children with a significant range of opportunity to develop their preferred learning styles, to foster their confidence, self-esteem, resilience and health and well-being, whilst always building on their current personal achievements.

In a school that is inspired by environmental education, science and information & communication technology, we equip our young learners to embrace the challenges of the 21st century with confidence, imagination and optimism, whilst preparing them to make well-informed individual choices and decisions.

The following broad understandings underpin all our teaching and learning curriculum programs:-

Life on Earth is interconnected - living things depend on each other.
We depend on the natural environment for our survival.
People interact with and value the environment in different ways and for different reasons.
There are ways we can all modify our lifestyles in order to better ensure the health of the planet.
Environmental issues are sometimes characterized by a conflict of interest.
The natural environment is a source of learning and of fun, creativity, relaxation and adventure.

Integrating Naturally K. Murdoch, 1992

Our mission inspires:-

Care for self and awareness of the environment and the world
The development of life-long learners who are able to generate important questions and find solutions to the many problems they may face in the future
Children who have ownership of ideas, events and projects through appropriate action ie, they are empowered as learners..

2.Critically important - work that's worth doing

Southmoor fosters a classroom culture of thinking through a whole school approach, with explicit teaching of thinking skills.

In a world of rapid change the next generation will need to be well schooled in thinking skills. Our programs take our students beyond basic acquisition and application of existing knowledge into the realms of creative and caring thinking. Our students will become free-thinking adults of the 21st century - with the ability to create the knowledge required to take us beyond the information age.

Southmoor fosters the important tools for life-long learning by empowering students with skills, such as - the ability to reason; to make informed judgements; to critically evaluate information and to think creatively and caringly.

Southmoor's programs:-

Cater for the individual needs and special abilities of all students. The curriculum fosters, develops and celebrates lateral/critical thinking and forms a link between school and real-life application.
Our programs encourage children to think and speak with confidence and conviction.
They promote academic growth, the realization of potential, and the development of special interests, skills and abilities.
Our students are motivated to extend upon their preferred learning styles.

Some characteristics of tasks that engage Southmoor students in critically important learning include:-

Tasks worthy of effort, meaningful in, and connected to student's lives, of real work value and use, open ended and cognitively active
Responsive to needs, interests, progress of individuals
Involving student decision making and control
Fun
Practical and possible
Group as well as individual
Emotionally and ethically charged
Problem based
Reflective
Involving student decision making and control
Sustained rather than fragmented
In-depth rather than superficial
Stretching, but sufficiently scaffolded
Co-operative rather than competitive
Requiring a range of skills, strategies and approaches
Developing thinking and learning strategies to enable life-long learning
With teachers - cognizant of modelling of good thinking and learning qualities
located in a friendly, encouraging and stimulating learning environment

Also of critical importance to Southmoor is:-

The size of our school
Our Integration Program for students with disabilities. Students feel accepted and valued for their diversity and difference.

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