Specialist Learning Areas
The students at Sacred Heart are fortunate to be able to participate in four specialist areas that include Physical Education, Performing Arts, Visual Arts and Languages - Chinese.
Physical Education
Our Physical Education program incorporates the following;
- Ball games such as Netball, Basketball, Volleyball, Soccer, Football, and Softball are taught within the Physical Education program at F-6 levels
- Students in the senior classes compete against other schools in the area in an Inter-School competition
- Lightning Premiership and HoopTime competitions are on offer to students to compete against other schools in the area, including the local state schools
- A swimming program that focuses on swimming skills and water safety is held annually
- A senior school and junior school have athletic carnivals during the year, the senior students support and help run the junior carnival
Languages - Chinese
Chinese is an engaging and rewarding language to learn. Students participate in weekly one 45 minute lessons that are both based on language learning and cultural appreciation. Lessons are taught with a class teacher coordinating the class and connected to a Chinese teacher live in a zoom link from China.
Follow up activities are provided bythe online language company.
The Arts - Visual Arts
Visual Arts includes the fields of art, craft, and design. Students create visual artworks that communicate, challenge and express their own and others’ ideas.
- The Visual Arts curriculum aims to develop students’:
- conceptual and perceptual ideas and expressions through design and inquiry processes
- visual arts techniques, materials, processes, and technologies
- critical and creative thinking, using visual arts languages, theories and practices to apply aesthetic judgment
- respect for and acknowledgment of the diverse roles, innovations, traditions, histories, and cultures of artists, craftspeople, designers, curators, critics and commentators
- respect for visual arts as social and cultural practices, including industry practices confidence, curiosity, imagination and enjoyment, and a personal aesthetic through engagement with visual arts making, viewing, discussing, analysing, interpreting and evaluating.
Performing Arts
Performing Arts include Dance, Drama, and Music. Students from years F-6 are involved in weekly sessions with a specialist teacher to develop their creative and expressive capacities by learning about the different practices, disciplines, and traditions that have shaped the expression of culture locally, nationally and globally.
Performing Arts contributes to the development of confident and creative individuals. Students express, represent and communicate ideas in contemporary, traditional and emerging art forms.
Students are given the opportunity to experience and express themselves through the use of dramatic plays, musical instruments, dance and movement. Concerts are held to showcase their learning.
Each week students participate in 45 minute classes in the subject areas of Science and Information Technology (IT), the children also participate in a literacy enhancement lesson which focuses on literature appreciation oral language expression and gives the children opportunity to borrow books from the library, these lessons are run by the classroom teachers.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Classroom teachers deliver weekly lessons in skills for the Digital Technologies, the application of the technology is woven across all curriculum areas, this aims to ensure that students can:
- design, create, manage and evaluate sustainable and innovative digital solutions to meet and redefine current and future needs
- use computational thinking
- apply systems thinking to their everyday life
- apply protocols that support safe, ethical and respectful use of digital platforms
All children must discuss with their parents correct protocols for interaction on digital platforms, they must sign a user agreement updated every year to maintain the privilege of technology use.
SCIENCE
Weekly science lessons are taught by classroom teachers, the science curriculum aims to ensure that students develop:
- an interest in curiosity and willingness to explore, ask questions about and speculate on the changing world in which they live
- an understanding of the vision that science provides
- a range of scientific inquiry methods, including questioning, planning and conducting experiments and investigations based on ethical principles, collecting and analysing data, evaluating results, and drawing critical, evidence-based conclusions
- to communicate scientific understanding
- an ability to solve problems and make informed, evidence-based decisions
- an understanding of historical and cultural contributions to science as well as contemporary science issues
- a solid foundation of knowledge of the biological, chemical, physical, Earth and space sciences.
LIBRARY
To enhance English a rich love of literature is embraced at Sacred Heart, children spend one lesson a week dedicated to the development of this endearment. Classroom teachers take library sessions focused on the many forms of text; written, spoken or multimodal, print or digital/online forms. These texts provide important opportunities for learning about aspects of human experience and the wonderment of the world we live in.