Learning

Holy Spirit has an excellent reputation for providing a welcoming, innovative and academically diverse environment for its students. Current resources and excellent facilities are a feature of the school environment. The recent refurbishment project has seen all classrooms equipped with the latest technology and updated with contemporary furniture allowing for a flexible learning environment.

Holy Spirit staff are committed to providing a high level of quality education and pastoral care for all students. The teaching programs aim to strengthen and enhance learning opportunities across all learning areas and are driven by data from a range of sources.

A strong focus on Literacy and Numeracy and the implementation of early intervention strategies ensures that all children are catered for. Specialist teachers are involved in the areas of; music, visual arts, Italian, physical education, library and Literacy. There is a special focus on the arts with school choirs and private instrumental and vocal tuition available.

 

Literacy

There are three strands in the English curriculum that we teach:  Language, Literature and Literacy.  Reading, writing, speaking and listening are integrated into these strands.  SoundWaves is the spelling program that Holy Spirit implements from PP to Y6.  Students work at their own spelling levels.  

Each class has a daily allocated literacy block.  Explicit Teaching and Whole Class Instruction will be carried out in conjunction with literacy rotations.  During this time, students will be involved in various activities such as guided reading, genre writing, interactive reading tasks, comprehension activities and literacy games.

Teachers at Holy Spirit use Brightpaths, which is an assessment and reporting software that allows teachers from Year 1 to Year 6 make reliable assessments of student achievements in Writing based on classroom tasks.  Teachers can compare their students' work with calibrated exemplars.  Pre and post writing samples will be collected so growth and achievement can be gauged, and to assist with teacher planning, targeting the needs of each student.

Numeracy

The Mathletics and iMaths programs are two of the resources we are using that are directly linked to the Western Australian Curriculum that foster an investigative/problem solving approach to mathematics.  They build and develop students' understanding of maths concepts, improve mathematical fluency and problem-solving skills, and provide real-life contexts in which students can develop higer-order reasoning.

Our mathematics learning is focused around the three learning strands of Number & Algebra, Measurements & Geometry, and Statistics & Probability.  Students are encouraged to share their personal methods, discoveries and challenges that they experience during lessons.