Introduction

Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.

“Regular schools with an inclusive orientation are the most effective means of combating attitudes, creating welcoming communities, building an inclusive society and achieving education for all …” UNESCO, 1994

Memorising facts and information is not the most important skill in today’s world … facts change, and information is readily available … What’s needed is an understanding of how to get, and then make sense of, the mass of information available to us!

At Christ Our Holy Redeemer we view diversity as the norm. We believe this leads to personalised learning within a class or community of learners.

Christ Our Holy Redeemer believes that the best teaching practice is to ‘teach without telling’. Our learning and teaching philosophy is based on the Inquiry approach where our students, along with staff, are encouraged to think deeply, ask questions, sort information and discover answers on any given topic, and to take action and do something with the new information gathered.

  • To develop all of our students to be independent learners and task focused.
  • To explicitly teach literacy and numeracy skills that underpin everything we do.
  • To explicitly teach our students the social skills, thinking skills, self-management skills and information skills they need to be successful learners.
  • To design units of work that are student driven and teacher directed.
  • To allow students to work collaboratively and/or individually, as well an in small group and whole class settings
  • To create environments that encourages and allows students to work alone or with others.
  • To build a body of learners that are able to source out relevant information, to be skilled in validating information, to clarify issues and be critical of their findings.
  • For students to be able to give, and receive, constructive criticism.
  • To create environments and communities of learners that are willing to contribute and able to appreciate the ideas of others
  • To establish collaborative group work that encourages students to talk, comment, compare, negotiate, hypothesise, and problem solve.
  • For the teaching staff to learn along side the students to listen, observe and document students’ work
  • For the teaching staff to continue to become an active and strong community of professional learners through provoking, co-constructing and stimulating thinking, in collaboration with their peers.
  • For the teaching staff to be committed to reflecting about their own learning and teaching.