Students in the middle years should already come equipped with a wide range of experiences and foundations skills passed on from family life, as well as being gathered and learnt in the early years of schooling.  Each student will have been able to take the tools and preferences for how they learn, build on them, and be ready to further strengthen them as they move through the middle school.  Students should expect to encounter opportunities to become successful learners.  Further consolidation and strengthening of basic Literacy and Numeracy skills is a priority for the middle years, coupled with building resiliency, facing challenges, developing and applying problem solving within physical, social and academic situations and, using student questioning to aid them in learning how to specifically research and find answers for a range of different topics.

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Children / Students

It is important to remember that a student in the middle years is a whole identity.  Meaning, they are made up of physical, emotional, social and academic attributes.  Therefore, during the middle years these characteristics need to be balanced and nurtured, within the learning environment, so that the ‘whole’ student is developing as they progress through their school life.

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Learning​

During the middle years students can face opportunities to develop and strengthen their own opinions on specific topics.  They will take their ability to ponder and design questions to help them research, inform and convey their personal opinions and understandings about all facets of: English, Mathematics, Science, History, Geography, The Arts, Technology and Bible.  It is important for students in the middle years to have a balanced approach, incorporating the three main learning styles of auditory, visual and kinesthetic. 

 

Teaching

The role of teachers in the middle years is to be both providers and facilitators.  It is their objective to provide an appropriate level of explicit teaching, support and scaffolding for students to be successful with their learning and development.   Educators are facilitators in the sense that they provide their students with resources, experiences and opportunities to increase, and improve their knowledge and understanding, for their own personal and individual achievement.

 

Environment

Throughout the middle years there is a large difference between the age ranges, making it very logical that there will be a difference within the classroom environments.  In the 3-4 Year Group, students have the opportunity to move around the classroom environment and choose what is best suited to the piece of work they are doing.  Each student is provided with their own working space and utensils, while also being free to make a choice about their work mode.  The immediate classroom environment is equipt/equipped with a number of areas for offering free activity choice.  Quiet reading and relaxing, drawing and creating, technology access, board game resources, scrap making and lego construction.

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In the 5-6 Year Group, students again are provided with their own work space…..

 

All the middle year groups experience moving through the school campus and using all the internal and external facilities on offer as well as having the opportunity to learn through excursion based activities, such as student leadership building, camps, co-ed and boys and girls outdoor educational activities.

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Community

As in the early years, middle school also believes that learning is a collaborative effort between students, teachers and families.  Each play a valued role in the education of a student as they continue their growth to become a more active part of the wider community.  We also believe the students are of an age where they are beginning to understand a range of simple to complex Godly based principles, which they can relate and apply to both their social and academic experiences, within Heritage College.  These understandings are continually built on as students move through the whole school environment, encouraging each individual to develop a relationship with God, his principles and values.  It is our ideal that this allows our students to become valued members and leaders of both immediate communities and their future employment communities.