Teaching and Learning

At St. Patrick’s Catholic School, we are proud to be an active participant in the system-wide implementation of the Insight Project, a transformative initiative designed to enhance our educational practices and student outcomes. Developed by Catholic Education Tasmania, the Insight Project is designed to foster optimal and sustained student learning and achievement. It is grounded in three core pillars: a knowledge-rich curriculum, the Science of Learning—which draws on research from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and education to deepen our understanding of the learning process—and high-impact teaching practices.

Teachers recognise that teaching and learning is a relational process that involves:

• Daily, explicit instruction through active, face-to-face lessons that are highly interactive;

• Scaffolding students' understanding and learning experiences, while working towards the automaticity of core knowledge;

• Continuously striving to enhance their instructional skills and the teacher-student dynamic.

Lessons grounded in the Science of Learning are purposeful, explicit, and structured around Rosenshine’s ten principles of instruction. They incorporate frequent reviews, feedback and assessments to reinforce learning. Carefully sequenced, pre-planned, and often scripted, these lessons are designed to ensure efficiency, clarity, and effectiveness in promoting student achievement. Additionally, they are scaffolded to optimise each student’s working memory, reducing cognitive load for better learning outcomes.

Our knowledge-rich curriculum is carefully structured to arrange, interleave, and sequence essential content for each subject and year level. This approach is articulated through a system-wide scope and sequence for every subject at each year level. Our students are active, engaged participants, with each activity centered around their learning. Each lesson is designed to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge, aiming for permanent memory retention and accurate long-term recall.

At St Patrick’s we teach the following programs from the MultiLit Suite:

• PreLIt - Kindergarten

• InitiaLit Foundation - Prep

• InitiaLit 1- Year 1

• InitiLit 2 - Year 2

• Language Lift - Kindergarten & Prep

• MiniLit - Intervention Prep - Year 2

• MacqLit - Intervention in Years 3 - 6

The MultiLit programs are based on the Simple View of Reading model put forward by Gough and Tunmer (1986). Reading comprehension has two major processes, word recognition and language comprehension. Students need to understand the alphabetic principle i.e., letters are represented by sounds and this knowledge can be used to read words. For this to occur, beginning readers need to receive explicit, and systematic instruction in both phonemic awareness and phonics. These contribute to word recognition in the Simple View of Reading.

Source Five From Five

Phonemic awareness and letter-sound correspondences give students the skills they need to begin decoding words. In the early stages of learning to read, children benefit from reading decodable texts. The use of decodable readers have a high percentage of phonically regular words and generally only use letter-sound correspondences that have been previously learned by children. They contain fewer irregular high frequency words than other texts. Students who read decodable texts are more accurate successful readers who are better at reading unfamiliar words when they come across them in other text types.

Teaching children some high frequency words, also known as sight words, or irregular words, is important for connecting text to reading and writing. Once children have mastered more letter - sound correspondences more purposeful tricky words instruction can begin. Almost all words can be partially decoded using phonics skills. Children put their phonics skills to good use reading tricky words.

Reading fluency is important to reading comprehension. Reading fluency improves when students can read a large number of words without the need to decode each word they encounter. This ultimately leads to greater comprehension.

Spelling Mastery is designed to explicitly teach spelling skills to students in grades 3 through to year  6. Spelling Mastery includes phonemic, morphemic, and whole-word strategies:

• Teachers use the phonemic strategy to teach beginning students to use sound–symbol correspondence to spell words and then generalise these skills to spell word segments that follow regular patterns.

• Teachers use the morphemic strategy to teach more advanced students meaningful prefixes, suffixes, and word bases, and how to apply consistent rules to merge words and word segments.

• Teachers use the whole-word strategy to teach all students to spell common words with irregular letter sounds and to memorise these more difficult words.

Spelling Mastery is delivered in daily 20 minute sessions. Spelling Mastery provides teachers with fully-scripted lessons organised according to students’ skill development. Instruction is provided in scaffolded steps to help students finish each concept before a new one is presented (Institute of Education Sciences, 2014).

The methodology rests on explicit, carefully sequenced instruction, building from sentences to compositions. The Hochman Method is not a separate writing curriculum but rather an approach designed to be adapted to and embedded in the content being taught in any subject area and at any grade level. The Writing Revolution is explicitly taught, scaffolded and reinforced. The Writing Revolution’s evidence-based strategies ensure that all students at all levels can produce clear, coherent, unified, and structured writing. Armed with those strategies, students become better readers, communicators and most importantly, critical thinkers (The Writing Revolution, 2023).

Catholic Education Tasmania is developing a rich collection of curriculum resources for English Literature. These resources are designed to support teachers with high-quality, engaging materials that align with the curriculum and meet diverse student needs. The English Literature units aim to deepen students' understanding of literary texts, enhancing their critical thinking and analytical skills.

Catholic Education Tasmania has also developed its own comprehensive Mathematics Curriculum, closely aligned with the Australian Curriculum, to ensure that all students receive a high-quality mathematics education. The curriculum is designed to provide clear and structured learning pathways, with a well-defined scope and sequence for each year level, outlining the specific skills and knowledge students are expected to acquire.

The implementation of this curriculum includes a daily review of explicit lessons, allowing students to focus on key concepts, reinforce their understanding, and build fluency in mathematical skills. In addition, the curriculum provides ample opportunities for students to consolidate their learning, make connections across different areas of mathematics, and be challenged with problem-solving activities that extend their thinking.

By emphasising a high-quality, low-variance approach, Catholic Education Tasmania ensures that all students receive consistent and rigorous instruction in mathematics. This approach helps to maintain a focus on fundamental concepts while also fostering a deep understanding of mathematics.

In Religious Education, our Instructional Leader guides teachers in deepening their theological understanding and enhancing instructional practices, with a focus on dialogue to develop students' moral and social abilities. All students participate in daily religious education lessons, and are led in—or lead—prayer and whole-school meditation at appropriate times throughout the day. Students also have the opportunity to prepare for the Sacraments of Penance, Eucharist, and Confirmation through a family-centred, parish-based, school-supported program.

More information on the Tasmanian Catholic Education INSIGHT Project can be found on the INSIGHT Website.