At Mareeba State School...
Our Vision is to provide every child with a successful start to their formal education by ensuring that every child in every classroom is learning and achieving.
Our Mission is to ensure every student achieves a year's worth of learning gain for a year's worth of teaching.
Our Mantra is simple - it takes a village to raise a child!
At MSS, we are committed to providing an inclusive education for all students to have access to a world-class education, focusing on the individual needs of the child and celebrating success. Through strong partnerships with parents and the broader community, the school has an excellent track record of successfully personalising learning and making a difference for each and every student within a culturally diverse and inclusive environment.
Our school implements the Australian Curriculum in English, Mathematics, Science, HASS, HPE, The Arts, Technology and LOTE - AUSLAN through using the resources of the Curriculum into the Classroom (C2C) units across all year levels - Prep to Year 6.
At Mareeba State School, we utilise a variety of pedagogical approaches, practices, theories and teaching strategies to contextualise units, and increase student engagement and outcomes.
Our teaching staff use explicit teaching for teaching concepts and skills. Through this approach, teachers clearly explain to students why they are learning something, how it connects to what they already know, how to do it and what it looks like when they have succeeded. At MSS, a new skill or concept is always taught using the explicit teaching model - I DO, WE DO, YOU DO.
MSS teachers also use inquiry-based learning, which is is different from the traditional approach as it reverses the order of learning. Instead of presenting 'the answer' up-front, teachers start with a range of scenarios, qiestions and problems for students to navigate. It involves students planning and carrying out investigations, proposing explanations and solutions, and communicating their understanding of concepts in a variety of ways. It is an approach that encourages collaboration and is effective in most learning areas.
Problem-based learning focuses on hands-on, active learning centred on investigation driven by challenging, open-ended problems with with no one 'right' answer. This learning process does not focus on problem solving with a defined solution, and instead urges students to develop high-level thinking skills. This approach is often used as students use reading, writing, math or other subjects to answer questions.
Parents are informed each term of the curriculum expectations for each year level through Curriculum at Home flyers that are sent home with students. Regular Curriculum Updates are also published twice per term on our website with our fortnightly Sentinel.