The Foundation for Learning Program
The Foundations for Learning Program will be implemented in Year 7 in 2018 at Bankstown Girls High School. This is a program designed to equip students with the ability to cope with the demands of the 21st Century and to instil the habits of mind that foster lifelong learning. As such this program will nurture and develop students' skills in communicating, collaborating, critical thinking, creating and problem solving as they engage with the curriculum across all the Key Learning Areas.
The program will underpin students' foundations for learning by exploring and extending their general capabilities as mandated in the Australian Curriculum. A focus of the Program will be on the delivery of a purposefully connected curriculum highlighting the links that students can make across Key Learning Areas and an approach to learning that is inquiry based. This will increase students' motivation and engagement in learning and support them to see connections to what they are learning and the wider world. The Foundations for Learning Program will also facilitate the development of students' literacy, numeracy and ICT skills during timetabled teaching periods and student involvement in STEAM projects throughout the academic year.
The other very important focus of the Foundations for Learning Program is to ensure that every student successfully transitions from Year 6 into Year 7 and feels connected to the school community. The wellbeing of the girls will be enhanced through Peer Support, The Best Me Program and the weekly Foundations for Learning periods which will bring Year 7 students together to work on connected curriculum and inquiry based projects as a team. Throughout the year the students will complete a weekly reflection journal to enhance their understanding of themselves as learners and to build their learning power across all Key Learning Areas.