Curriculum & Progress
SMSJ’s Approach to the curriculum
Our curriculum is a blended approach which adopts elements of Jerome Bruner’s (Bruner, J 1960. The Process of Education) strategy of re-visiting skills and topics. Each time content is re-visited, it is hoped that our students will gain deeper knowledge and broaden their skills along their learning journey.
Our Spiral curriculam is intended to blend enquiry-type learning traditional approaches to teaching to facilitate progress. Key features of our curriculum which facilitate progress are:
- Revisiting topics, themes or subjects throughout each key stage;
- The complexity of the topics or themes increasing with each revisit;
- New learning has a relationship with previous learning and is put in context with the previous information.
We have developed Learning Journals which contain roadmaps that summarise the learning journey undertaken by our students.
Our approach to Progress
We recognise that each student is unique, talented, creative and has the ability to make progress in their learning journey. Things that may differ from student to student are values, perspectives, concerns and learning styles (William, D 2017. Embedded Formative Assessment)
Assessment of progress is an integral part of instruction and it determines whether or not our learning intentions are being met. It enables us to know whether or not our teaching strategies support our students to make progress. At SMSJ, we acknowledge that progress is not a linear process but ‘spirals’ upwards as complex material, properly structured and presented, is introduced in increasingly challenging contexts. We have adopted a process which supports our curriculum.