Secondary School

Secondary Classes

Our secondary classes are made up of composite classes, which cater for the following students based on literacy & numeracy stages so we can best cater for their learning needs; Matthew & Mark (Year 7-8), Luke (Year 7-9), Acts  (Year 9-10), Alpha (Year 10-11) and Omega Class (Year 12).  

As shown by research, a composite class is a game changer when it comes to students learning experiences. It enhances students’ learning development in numerous ways and is beneficial to both older and younger students. For example, students are provided with differentiated learning activities that are aimed at meeting or extending their individual learning needs. The older students take on the mentoring role and benefit from helping younger students during collaborative learning teams. Younger students integrate quickly into well-established class routines as modeled by older students and benefit from the support given by both the teacher and their peers. This results in students developing greater respect for individual differences across the board.  

Literacy 

CAPS Coolgardie is a Christ-centred learning community that is committed to foster the scholastic and athletic gifts of each unique student for entry into tertiary institutions and the communities they will build.  One of the School’s visions is to set a high standard of expectations within the mindset of our students and one of the expectations includes literacy excellence. In order to achieve this standard, teaching must be literacy-focused as per our school literacy plan, with the aim of nurturing the love for reading and writing. In doing so, such is expected to improve the literacy outcomes of our students. Another goal is to work towards obtaining a higher percentage of students who are reading, comprehending and writing at age-appropriate levels.  In order for this to happen, our job is to consistently adopt best practice approaches to the teaching and learning of English in our classrooms.

Literacy outcomes:

• Students choose to read for enjoyment. The school aims at investing more on new literature, including more visuals such as comic books, e-books and visuals. The students are known to learn best concretely.
• Struggling readers develop strong sight-word recognition and practise their decoding skills using Sound Waves, Study ladder and Education Perfect websites. They will also read from recommended graded A-Z Readers as per their PM benchmark test results and ongoing Sharp Reading (Story Bytes) records.
• All students will develop retelling and reflective skills as well as reading fluency using the Sharp Reading approach and maximum daily reading exposures from other literary texts.
• All students will develop and derive a wider vocabulary after making meanings from new words met in various literary texts.
• Each classroom will have a literacy-rich environment (eg. Books displayed; Word walls).
• Ongoing key literacy data is collected and analysed through annual testing programmes (OLNA, PAT-R, NAPLAN, IPI, PM Benchmarking) to provide feedback and input into teaching programs.

Based on the above expected outcomes, it must be stated that the English Department for High School is continuously trying its best to adopt its best practice approaches as stated above and working hard to achieve the expected outcomes, through ongoing reflective teaching and literacy data collection.  The collection of data is an essential practice at CAPS Coolgardie because it is used to evaluate the progress of the previous year’s teaching and learning programmes. Such informs teachers about their teaching strengths and weaknesses as well as areas for reteaching or improvement. We also follow the students’ progress and identify the right resources that will help extend their Literacy skills or provide them with the right literature as per their abilities. We also archive our yearly literacy reports that include analysis of data collected for NAPLAN, OLNA and PAT-R test results, plus findings and recommendations at class level, as per specific group needs for future references and for parental access.