Our school is committed to ensuring our programs meet the needs of our students. We endeavour to ensure all students experience success in learning through the following key initiatives:
- The ongoing and frequent use of a core set of highly effective teaching practices. Known as our 'Marsden State School Pedagogical Playbook', these practices are research-based and have been shown to have a positive impact on the learning of students. Currently, our playbook consists of the following high impact strategies that teachers regularly plan for and implement throughout their teaching programs; Learning Intentions and Success Criteria, Check for Understanding, Effective Feedback, Retrieval Practice, Structured Classroom Discussion, Organising and Transforming Thinking.
- Embedding Visible Learning practices in all classrooms including collaborative goal setting and effective feedback.
- A Guaranteed and Viable curriculum for reading, providing students with additional instruction when required (Tier 2).
- Small group, targeted intervention in reading of up to 4x 30min sessions per week for selected students (Tier 3).
- The integration of Information and Communication Technologies across all curriculum areas.
- School-Wide Positive Behaviour Support (PBL) incorporating social skills programs such as The Resilience Project.
- School readiness programs for children from birth to five years (Playgroup, Prep Transition/Orientation etc.).
Our Expert Teaching Team – A Collaborative Approach
A collaborative and collective effort is our standard way of working at Marsden. On CP days, when students are engaged in specialist lessons (e.g. Health, PE, The Arts: Prep to 3, LOTE: years 4 to 6, STEM etc.), our teachers work collaboratively in teams to plan the best possible learning experiences for students. In this dedicated PLC time each fortnight, teachers discuss which aspects of the curriculum should be a focus for the term, develop 'check in' assessments (used across the cohort), and create plans for targeted interventions (tier 2) for those students that need more time or instruction to attain proficiently in the selected aspects of the curriculum.