English Faculty 2007
Philosophical Orientation
We believe in an outcomes-based approach to literacy & learning, through the vehicles of goal-directed and student-centred learning. All our programmes and strategies are driven by this fundamental belief.
Curriculum
Our lower school curriculum is outcomes-based and is informed by three basic questions:
- What are the skills, understandings and cognitive tools we would want students to have upon leaving school? This includes an understanding of values in education.
- What is the best developmental sequence for these? Thus, our courses from year 8 to year 10 seek to build students' skills in prescribed areas of knowledge: for example, simple argumentative or hortatory essays in year 8 progressing to more complex analytical/discursive essays in year 9 and 10.
- What are the skills and understandings necessary for success in upper school?
This allows students to show their mastery of the outcome in a variety of ways and at a variety of levels
Monitoring and Accountability
Portfolio System
In 1997 we introduced a monitoring system that focuses on real information about student achievement and not just on analyses of students' marks, grades, or levels allocated by a variety of teachers within a faculty.
Our portfolio reporting and monitoring system requires students to collect all formally assessed work in a special file. This provides real evidence about students' progress in English which informs our curriculum and forms the basis of individualised learning programmes for students. These are discussed and negotiated in one-to-one conferences with the teacher, during which individuals receive personal feedback on their latest achievement and advice on their next literacy goal/s. We term this process 'Goal Directed Learning' and are convinced, from evidence provided in the portfolios, of its efficacy in helping students achieve desired outcomes.
Goal Directed Learning
Although each outcome in our courses can be achieved at a variety of levels (as per an outcomes-based approach) each student is expected to set challenging yet achievable performance goals for every set task and to monitor the achievement of these through regular one-to-one consultation with the teacher. Thus, individualised tuition of every student is structured into our curriculum and occurs regularly throughout the year. This practice is based on a notion of 'value adding' (which refuses to judge students' progress purely on their ability to achieve higher levels), demands that students be proactive in the learning process and operates through the mechanism of student portfolios in which they collect all assessed work. Before attempting a set task, all students are required to set themselves clearly articulated literacy goal/s and to attempt seriously to achieve them. This attempt is then evaluated in a conferencing session with the teacher during which new goals are suggested or old ones reaffirmed.