Staff Professional Learning Day

The St Paul’s teaching staff recently engaged in a staff professional learning day. Teacher professional learning helps teachers gain insight into and knowledge of their craft. It encourages the development of new ways of thinking about content and new approaches to teaching. This will substantially affect student achievement over a sustained period of time. Changes in teaching practice and improved student achievement need to be observed and/or measured.

In implementing changed practice, teachers acquire new knowledge, modify their existing beliefs and attitudes in relation to their teaching and sustain that change over time. This change in teaching practice needs to correlate strongly with the improvement of specified student outcomes.

The focus of the professional learning day was engaging with the new K-2 English and Mathematics syllabus which schools are mandated to use in 2023. Teachers studied the syllabus to:

• understand the new curriculum content and structure
• understand where to look for and find key information related to the NSW Primary Curriculum
• be able to apply understanding of the new curriculum to programming and planning
• be able to navigate and personalise the programming experience with the new digital curriculum.

It is encouraging to note that the new K - 2 syllabus will finally reflect the research and evidence based teaching that the St Paul’s teachers have tirelessly worked with over the past 5 years to explicitly teach phonics and teach reading using decodable readers and moving away from ‘reading levels’.

Below is an outline of curriculum reform for English and Mathematics. In 2024 the curriculum reform will continue with a new syllabus for English and Mathematics for years 3 - 6.