School mission
At Macknade State School, student improvement sits at the heart of our teaching practice.
We believe in providing teaching and learning opportunities which cater for the diverse needs of our learners, while also maintaining the intent of the curriculum. Elements of The Dimensions of Teaching and Learning and John Fleming’s work on explicit teaching are combined to form a guiding framework around which our teachers design their planning, learning sequence and assessment.
As teachers we work hard to provide learning experiences to ensure that every day in every classroom, every student is provided with the opportunity to achieve to the best of their ability. When creating any learning experience, teachers seek to understand the readiness of all learners and set challenging and achievable learning goals.
As Principal I set high standards for myself and in turn have high expectations of our staff and our students. I believe we owe our children the opportunity to achieve their absolute best.
At Macknade Primary School we aim to establish a supportive learning environment in which good learning and teaching practices flourish. We want to build an environment in which children are motivated to achieve within a balanced curriculum; challenged by high expectations, and given the opportunity to succeed through a variety of high yield teaching strategies.
We can improve our practice. We do this by working smarter and by working together. At Macknade, historically we see respectable results from most children and overall we can be pleased at how well our students perform when compared to similar schools across the state. However, not everyone performs at their best, not everyone has acquired the skills essential to be a successful learner and only a few truly excel. We have both a responsibility and an opportunity to improve outcomes for our students.
Core values
Improving levels of student achievement is the core business of all classroom teachers, school leaders and support staff. At Macknade State School our primary focus is on improving writing outcomes for all students.
Through collaborative planning and teamwork we can improve our performance, not by working extra hours, but by making every moment count in the time we already have.
The teaching of writing is our key priority and to do this we have adopted a whole school approach to writing. We are building the capability of staff in the teaching of writing through intensive coaching processes and targeted professional development. We have embeded the use of writing strategies explicitly taught in Literacy blocks, into all writing tasks in all learning areas.
We provide quality feedback based on evidence from student work, to ensure that all students know the next steps in improving their writing. We have embeded the use of comprehensive and challenging learning goals for each student based on a writing data set, to target improvement and continued growth in the craft of writing.
Behaviour and beliefs
Learning involves students in making sense of the world. It is not simply about absorbing information, but is an active process of making links and contextualizing ideas.
It is a complex and challenging process and teachers make thousands of decisions about learning and teaching every day. The most critical of these focus on the student.
We ask of our students that they are able to articulate these 5 key questions about every lesson:
What am I learning?
How am I going?
How do I know?
How could I improve?
Where can I go for help?
Student outcomes are improved by creating a school environment where teachers and students are learning partners who work consistently to set learning priorities and implement a series of teaching and learning processes, to improve student learning outcomes and to reflect upon their practice and the efficacy of each learning experience.