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There is a place for every child at St Joseph's, Taree

The Mission of St Joseph’s Primary School is to “Do whatever it takes to serve our learners and provide a quality catholic education”, and this is supported by our staff’s statement of commitment which indicates “We will educate ALL students to the best of our ability, so that they may achieve to the best of theirs.”

Frank Jones October 12, 2021

With a Professional Learning Community based on these commitments, and situated among a large, beautiful, and friendly setting with the latest resources, the students of St Joseph’s are well placed to engage enthusiastically and confidently with their learning.  There is a place for every child here at St Joseph’s, Taree.

Our priority focus is on Continuous Learning, Social Justice, our community wellbeing and improved learning.

Our exceptional teaching staff are provided with significant and consistent on-site professional learning each day through the support and guidance of two full time instructional leaders. The sole purpose of our instructional leaders is to provide this daily support to our exceptional teachers through co teaching activities, coaching sessions, small group personalised interventions, and collaborative personalised planning for each student based on our teacher’s quality assessment of each students work samples. All this has resulted in improved outcomes for our students.

We have also invested heavily in the digital technologies for learning and have just appointed a STEM coordinator to ensure that the students not only have access to our robotics and digital and multimedia resources, but they also have the skills to engage with this technology. The STEM coordinator works closely with the teachers to build their capacity to incorporate these digital technologies into the daily classroom tasks.

In 2021, we opened our Learning Hub, a purpose-built contemporary learning area that enables students to engage with a variety of digital technologies every single day in every Key learning area. Whether they be in their classroom or in “the Hub”, they use iPads, laptops, beetlebots, robots, spheros, and a multitude of software to redefine their learning. Examples of this are taking photos and annotating the content, creating graphic models, designing learning games through coding, investigating 3D printing, making movies, creating learning journals, and building websites, all of these which demonstrate their enhanced learning on a variety of platforms. Their learning is enhanced because they are engaged, they enjoy the relevance to their learning and their skill levels, they are appropriately challenged, they can choose their mode of learning and presentations, they have a great understanding of the learning intentions being asked of them and the success criteria they need to meet when dealing with digital technologies.

The school’s investment in digital learning has been significant with the employment of a teacher and enough digital resources to ensure that all students can be engaged at the same time in all classrooms across the school on either an iPad, laptop, Apple TV, or several other devices mentioned earlier. This focus on digital technologies has provided improved outcomes for our students.

We invite all members of our community to come along and see for yourselves – when Covid protocols allow of course. Until then, check out our digital learning platform and Facebook page for a variety of examples of the skilful and playful students at work.

Published in Manning River Times

Photo by Callam Howard, Drama Teacher at St Clare's, Taree.