Curriculum Initiatives
The Middle Phase of Learning
The Gap State School has a commitment to improving learning opportunities and experiences for our students in the middle years 4 - 7.
During these years of schooling, teachers focus on providing a learning environment that is relevant and enriching. Developing and maintaining strong relationships with their students is a high priority. Through a healthy sense of challenge and a diverse range of learning opportunities suited to the needs of the individual, we aim to provide our students with a positive self-image, valuable interpersonal, team building and organizational skills, a sense of community spirit and the academic competence to transition successfully into the secondary years of schooling and beyond.
Children in this age range are going through an unmatched period of cognitive, physical, social and emotional change and growth. They begin to think more broadly about issues beyond the home and family, and they want to engage in authentic, meaningful learning.
Recent studies have shown that this is a time when many students lose their enthusiasm for learning, disengage from classroom activities and make the least progress in learning. While some students surge forward, others find the challenges too daunting, their interest falls, their progress slows and they are more likely to leave school early.
Research shows that students who are engaged and achieving in their learning during the middle phase and who are supported as they move to the senior phase are more likely to keep succeeding and stay engaged in learning and further education or training.
For these reasons, reforms to the Middle Phase of Learning in state schools are a priority for Queensland's education and training reform agenda.
We look forward to working with our local community to explore ways that the middle schooling philosophy can be embedded in the teaching-learning process.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for Learning
The current generation of schoolchildren is growing up in a world where information and communication technologies (ICTs) are pervading almost all aspects of their lives.
To assist their learning and development, schools must equip students with skills that will help them take control of their digital futures.
The three-year ICTs for Learning strategy aims to help state school students readily access a foundation level of ICTs at their schools.
It is about every state school having a foundation level of ICTs infrastructure and connectivity, and every state school teacher having a foundation level of ICTs skillsand an insight into ICTs curriculum integration.
ICTs are the tools through which technology in all its forms, are integrated into the curriculum.
We have recently purchased a number of Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) for classrooms throughout the school. We are hoping to equip each classroom through our ICT Levy.
One form of technology is the computer. Students have access to computers in their classrooms and through the Learning Technology Centre and the mobile lab. These networked computers enable access for individual and larger groups to be taught technology skills.
The school has an ICT Scope and Sequence Checklist that promotes skills being taught in sequence and in context. Teachers track the skills as they are achieved by each child.
A number of teachers at the school have achieved their ICT certificates in recognition of the integrated use of ICTs in their planning.
The school has an ICT Committee with staff and parents represented. The ICT Committee meets monthly.
Thinking Skills
The aim of The Gap State School’s Thinking Program is to promote student thinking that is open-ended and accepting of new ideas.
At The Gap State School we believe that thinking skills expand the mind so that it has a greater potential for processing information. Thinking skills are learned skills, involving a cumulative process developed by practice from Preschool to Year 7.
Thinking skills provide a framework for students to understand themselves and the world around them. They also help students achieve organisation in their thinking.
The Gap State School’s Thinking Program encourages students to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses and offers a variety of problem-solving strategies.
The Thinking Program is designed to develop student thinking by focusing on specific frameworks, which will enable them to better understand how thinking takes place:
These frameworks include:
- Bloom’s Taxonomy
- William’s Taxonomy
- DeBono’s Parallel Thinking
- 3-Story Intellect
- Critical and Creative Thinking
- Multiple Intelligences
- Metacognitive Thinking
For further information regarding the Thinking Skills Program please contact the Teacher-Librarian.
Social Skills
Social Skills, which are based on the values our culture believes to be important, need to be taught if students are to develop effective communication and social interactions.
Our Social Skills Program has two main aims:
- Relating to and communicating with others:
- Identifying possible consequences of one’s words and actions
- Showing concern and courtesy for others
- Reacting with sensitivity to individual and cultural differences
- Understanding that effective communication requires the individual to make considerable personal effort to understand others
- Listening to others
- Speaking with accuracy and poise.
- Working with others:
- Understanding that some situations require co-operative action
- Sharing tasks and working constructively with others
- Recognising that working with others requires contributions from all
- Recognising that others can be a valuable source of information
- Being an effective members of a group.
- 5.1 You Can Do It! Program Achieve
The social and emotional well-being of our students is supported by whole-school implementation of Dr Michael Bernard’s - You Can Do It! The program is designed around 5 key elements for success and happiness –
Confidence, Organization, Getting Along, Persistence and Resilience.
For further information regarding the Social Skills Program please contact the Teacher-Librarian.
