Teaching staff members of Middle Ridge State School are continually examining ways to refine both their pedagogy and curriculum offerings in order to ensure that the diverse learning needs of students are addressed whilst meeting the expectations of the Australian National Curriculum. Year level teaching teams meet regularly with the Head of Curriculum, Head of Special Education Services, teacher librarian, support teachers for literacy and numeracy, the school’s leadership and other key support staff to plan for engaging, relevant and worthwhile learning opportunities.
Our academic curriculum offerings are aligned with the Australian Curriculum and are developed in the following key learning areas:
English
Maths
Science
History
Geography
The essential learnings of the arts, health, Languages other than English (LOTE) and technology are also included in our academic programs and units of study.
All prep to year 7 classes participate in a 30 minute music lesson and a 30 minute physical education lesson with specialist teachers. Weekly library lessons are aligned with current English or history units for each year level. Students of years 5 to 7 also have an opportunity to undertake weekly LOTE lessons in Mandarin Chinese.
Whilst our school and its professional staff commit to a broad range of effective teaching strategies, there is a schoolwide commitment to a specific, research-evidenced instructional methodology i.e., explicit instruction, where very deliberate language and lesson structure is implemented by the teacher to maximum learning effect.
Explicit instruction lends itself well to teaching and learning within and across a number of learning areas, and when utilised is characterised by the following deliberate phases:
Data collection
Teachers collect student progress and achievement data in the short term, medium term and over the longer term using a range of proven assessment tools. This data is used to both monitor student progress and to inform teaching/learning practices.
Moderation
Class teachers regularly engage in focused professional dialogue to discuss and analyse how closely the evidence in student work matches the achievement standards. Whilst teachers undertake internal moderation of student work samples each semester, they also commit to an external process where they meet with their year level counterparts in other schools of the local cluster to moderate in one or more key learning areas. This process ensures consistency of teacher judgement and the grading of work across district schools.
Parent/teacher interviews
Formal face to face interviews between class teachers and parents are offered and conducted in term 1 and term 3 each year. These meetings provide an opportunity to discuss each student’s progress and ongoing academic and/social goals.
Reporting
Parents are provided with a written report of their child’s progress and attainment twice per year - at the end of term 2 (issued early term 3) and term 4.
Teaching and learning audit
As part of an initiative to improve student learning in Queensland state schools, Teaching and learning Audits are conducted in every Queensland state school to provide quality feedback on how the school is performing and to inform school planning processes.
The teaching and learning executive summary (PDF, 115 KB) gives a summarised list related to our school.