St Joseph’s School has a clear focus on learning. We encourage our students to be the best learners they can be and our teachers to be the best teachers they can be.

Recently Toowoomba Catholic School released an updated Teaching & Learning Framework which describes the priorities and requirements for all schools in relation to curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and reporting. The Framework directs and informs schools, providing them with a cohesive and comprehensive blueprint for delivering a consistent and equitable education, so that all students, regardless of their location, backgrounds, or abilities, are provided access to high-quality education.

Curriculum that is delivered to our students is informed by the Australian Curriculum in P-10, the TCS P-10 Religious Education Curriculum and the Queensland Senior Syllabuses and Vocational Education and Training requirements for Years 11 and 12. The teachers use the curriculum as the starting point to plan their units of work and individual lessons. Planning for personalised learning, that is, taking into account the needs of individual students, is a key part of this planning.

Pedagogy refers to how the curriculum is taught and how students are supported to learn. The TCS pedagogical model aims to maximise learning success. This model has the following priorities and elements.

Pedagogy priorities

Expert teachers employ high impact, evidence informed teaching practices informed by the science of how students learn best.

Effective teaching practices:

• develop expert learners who can operate capably and confidently in local and global contexts
• liberate human potential and spirit
• stimulate an appetite for lifelong learning
• inspire students to live lives of substance and meaning.

The TCS pedagogical model reflects how students learn best and clarifies the expected practices and strategies that personalise, connect and maximise student learning.

Elements of the TCS pedagogical model - Maximise Learning Success

1. Enable learning

Teachers enable learning for all students by maintaining a safe, orderly, disciplined learning culture where students belong, feel valued and experience success.

2. Phases of learning - Engage, Build, Deepen, Apply

Teachers deliberately choose high impact strategies that align with the following phases of learning and how students learn.

• Engage thinking: Draw attention and focus to the learning and spark curiosity.
• Build knowledge: Acquire, think, practice.
• Deepen understanding: Connect, practice, reflect.
• Apply learning: Transfer, extend, generate.

3. Empower learner agency

Teachers empower learner agency when they:

• empower, enable and support students to reflect on and take responsibility for their own learning
• support students in the capabilities of design, creative thinking, collaboration and problem solving
• encourage students to explore local and global contexts and issues from a Catholic perspective
• model the attributes of a lifelong learner.

The following two flowcharts detail the elements of the TCS pedagogical model.

The complete Teaching & Learning Framework can be downloaded here.

If you have any queries about your child’s learning, please contact their teacher, relevant curriculum leader or a member of the School Leadership Team.

God Bless