It has been a wonderful and rewarding first eight months at Genesis for me. We have exemplary children, beautiful grounds and classrooms, and an exceptional and professional staff. All of this is designed to support very high-quality student learning. As our Primary team focused on 2019, and what we needed to do to deliver an exceptional education for our students; we decided to renew our guiding vision for teaching and learning in Primary school, from which all other decisions are informed. I intend to share with you aspects of this over a series of newsletter articles, and elaborate on the great work being done in our Primary school.

“Learning at Genesis has each individual child’s development at heart. The journey of each child’s cognitive, social, emotional, and spiritual development is unique to them, and learning situations are designed to allow every child to access their curriculum at their stage of development. We value a sense of wonder, discovery and inquiry in children, as this allows for a deeper, more meaningful, intrinsic learning experience.”

The key word I would like to highlight above is Inquiry. At Genesis, Inquiry-based learning is a major focus of our school. Inquiry learning involves constructing our curriculum around a driving question; from which each student can follow a line of research or a project which is relevant or meaningful to them. An example of this recently has been in Year 3. Our Year 3 team in Geography has been looking at habitats in our Bray Park area. The students individually research the habitats, including native species and environmental impacts within. From here our students have been working with a range of project presentation methods to show their learning outcomes. These have included the use of Virtual Reality, Digital Technology, Lego, and also other traditional presentation styles. The key here though, is that our awesome Year 3 staff are able to engage each individual with the curriculum, by the students having choice over their learning and presentation style. When we do this, it greatly deepens the learning experience for students, with the skills and content we need them to learn sticking even better. Mrs Bennett and the Year 3 team have done a really exceptional job with Inquiry learning this term!

Jeremy Williamson
Head of School (Primary)