Gillen Primary School, Alice Springs
Summary
Gillen Primary School is situated in the town of Alice Springs and provides educational programs from preschool to Year 6. At the time of filming the school had 312 students of which 180 are Indigenous. Gillen has been a ‘National Accelerated Literacy Program’ school and is the hub school for this program in Central Australia. Gillen Primary School has worked through the implementation of English, mathematics, science, history and geography and is planning the implementation of health and physical education and languages. The school has developed an action plan for numeracy based on John Hattie’s Visible Learning.
The Multi Year level documents developed by the Northern Territory Department of Education form the basis of teacher planning. The Australian Curriculum has lifted expectations for all students and enabled teachers to see the standards set for all students across Australia.
The Accelerated Literacy Program is a priority providing the academic language and background knowledge for EAL/D (English as an additional language or dialect) students.
The school is focusing on visible learning and feedback. This is at teacher level, with teaching observation and feedback and coaching, particularly in mathematics. At student level, feedback is through praise and aims to develop student ownership of learning and working towards higher goals.
Gillen was one of the first two schools in the Northern Territory to trial scaffolding as an approach to their literacy acquisition program. This program was introduced into Gillen School in conjunction with staff from the University of Canberra. It is now known as the Accelerated Literacy Program, and is firmly entrenched as the foundation of the school’s Literacy Program. Numeracy teaching is based around the First Steps in Mathematics program.
The school has a specialist music program in operation for all students and individual students receive instrumental music tuition from the Northern Territory Music School.
The school has identified the Australian Curriculum’s general capability of personal and social capability as a priority in working with students and a new position of a Social and Emotional Well-being Officer has been added to the staffing.
Gillen Primary School
Gillen NT 0870 Australia
School type
Government
School sector
Primary
School location
Remote
School size
250 - 400 students
Copyright
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