St John the Apostle Primary School - Florey
PDF Details

Newsletter QR Code

Pawsey Circuit
Florey ACT 2615
Subscribe: https://stjohnflorey.schoolzineplus.com/subscribe

Email: office.sjaps@cg.catholic.edu.au
Phone: 02 6258 3592

Teaching and Learning

Brown-Rebekah-2020.jpg

Welcome to 2021! We have had a wonderful start and it is so lovely to have the students back at school.

I am very excited to communicate with our community each week about the wonderful teaching and learning that happens at St John's. This week, I am going to share about the structures we use to support the teaching of our English and Mathematics Curriculum. 

Daily 5 

Over the past two years, we have been implementing a structure to support the teaching of English. This is called Daily 5 and is broken up into 5 tasks. These are:
  • Read to Self
  • Work on Writing
  • Read to Someone
  • Listen to Reading 
  • Word Work

The Daily 5 structure develops student independence, increases enagement and, accelerates students growth. The five tasks completed in Daily 5 are founded in brain research and lead students to automaticity. Students who engage in ongoing repitition of tasks (The Daily 5 tasks) are able to more effectively establish automatic response patterns. Ultimately, when students achieve automaticity, they are able to use the saved brainpower to do more, resulting in the students being able to take in more information.

Over the past two years, we have seen growth across the school in our English results. We have seen this growth particularly in reading and spelling results. However, since the implementation of Daily 5 we have not only seen growth in direct outcomes, we have seen behaviour across the school improve and an increase in student engagement and independence. Due to the success of Daily 5 in our school, this year we are implementing Maths Daily 3 across the school. 

Maths Daily 3

Just like Daily 5, Maths Daily 3 is a way of structuring the Mathematics Curriculum. Maths Daily 3 is founded in the same research as Daily 5 and will support students develop deep conceptual understanding, mathematical proficiency, and a true love of mathematics. Maths Daily 3 is broken up into three daily tasks:

  • Maths by Myself
  • Maths Writing
  • Maths with Someone

Last year, we spent a lot of time purchasing and developing quality Maths resources to support the implementation of Maths Daily 3. Each class has been provided with 15 Maths Kits with a wide range of manipulatives (tactile resources). All students will spend time learning how to use the Maths resources and will learn about dice, cards, dominoes and counters and all of the ways these can be used to solve mathematical problems. 

Alongside the implementation of Maths Daily 3, our school staff will be partaking in a system wide approach of teaching Mathematics. We will be provided with expertise from Catholic Education to support us with our teaching of Maths. Catholic Education has also developed a curated suite of resources that we have access to, to support us in our teaching and learning of Maths at St John's. 

We are very eager and excited to be launching Maths Daily 3 in our school and we hope to see the same improvements we have seen in English, in our Mathematics outcomes and students behaviour and independence during Maths time. 

Rebekah Brown

Assistant Principal and Inclusion Coordinator