Project Based Learning & Literacy RELIGIOUS EDUCATION – LIVING THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, SEEING THE UNSEEN Year 8 students at St Joseph’s use Project Based Learning.This allows them to work in groups with other students and use the other spaces in the school to complete their tasks. On this particular occasion the Year 8 students were waiting to have access to the school landline in the staff room, for their Religious Education Project - Living the Christian Life, Seeing the Unseen. - Vicki Mills This style of learning is favoured by most students in the Year 8 learning community as it involves shared tasks. PBL also makes the most of the school areas as students are not limited to a single classroom and can use other useful rooms and equipment such as the library seminar rooms and the AV room. In Year 8 RE students completed different tasks to help the community. The “Living the Christian Life” project was completed in Term 3 of 2017 where students reached out to a chosen service agency and designed advertising material for the charitable organization. PBL helped them complete this as all students could contribute the most and shared the work. There were also different ideas put together and everyones strengths helped the group complete the task. Year 8 PBL involves students in their work and making full use of the learning areas. - Jack Condon, Year 8 HUMANITIES – SAVE THE SAMURAI Students completed a project in Humanities that compared aspects of feudal Japan with modern Japan. Displays were created on topics such as: warfare, social structures, architecture, cultural practices, fashion, food and many more. The following are reflections from students. - Michelle Bishop Everyone researched well and worked together well. Even when things didn’t go as planned or people made mistakes, we bounced back well. We made a great presentation and we made an even better team. - Jack Northey, Noah Bartolo, Darcy Norris & Will Lancaster Overall we worked well as a group and our presentation was completed. The presentation was well constructed and
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thought out with different members of the group presenting their information using different programs. - Caleb Ezard, Riley Firth, Alex Nguyen & Jack Linguey LITERACY When St Joseph’s College established a Secondary Literacy Improvement Project (SLIP) team, it intentionally included all Curriculum Area Leaders and Mrs Gemma Gray as the Literacy Coordinator. It was envisaged that by leading teachers to build literacy capacity within their own subject areas, they would then be equipped to support students to understand the literacy demands of their different subjects. It allows teachers to create effective and engaging texts that are unique to each subject. In 2017, the SLIP team continued to work with renowned literacy expert Mr Brian Dare to further develop team members’ knowledge of literacy strategies and provide opportunities to share examples of practice where the implementation of strategies led to improved learning outcomes for students. Some classes have worked on the ‘stages and phases’ of text while others focused more on using language like an expert through the ‘register continuum’. In each instance, teachers’ illustrations of practice led to improved learning and engagement within their classes. During staff professional learning time, members of the SLIP team conducted skill sessions for staff that introduced literacy strategies, facilitated workshops on how to implement the strategies and provided opportunities for staff to share their experience of using the strategies. The work to improve literacy at St Joseph’s is ongoing. In 2018, all staff will participate in a staff literacy day highlighting the work of the SLIP team to date as well as initiating a number of school-wide literacy practices. - Gemma Gray, Literacy Coordinator
