Emma Rayner

Mount Pleasant Primary School is located in the suburb of Mount Pleasant in Ballarat. The area that the school is located in is a low to medium socio-economic area of Ballarat. The school currently has an enrolment of approximately 200 students with 8 classes, all of which are composite.   The school’s values of aspiration, respect, honesty and co-operation are seen in the daily conduct of students and staff.

 

The school has a high emphasis on literacy and numeracy education which is supported by the 1:1 device program which includes iPads for students in years F-4 and Netbooks for years 5 and 6. The specialist subjects offered at the school currently are Physical Education, Visual Arts LOTE (Chinese) and optional Instrumental music lessons available. The school

 

The school believes in continuous learning for the teaching staff, running lesson studies each term to explore different approaches to teaching. For professional development, the school sends the teaching staff to different sessions outside of the school. The teachers that attend the professional development sessions then present what they learnt at the sessions to the rest of the teaching staff a few weeks later. Earlier this year the entirety of the teaching staff attended a week-long conference in Brisbane.

 

The teachers at Mount Pleasant Primary School employ a variety of different strategies in their teaching including team planning and teaching in each year level and mental maths warm ups to help students ‘switch-on for learning. Some of the other initiatives that the school have in place are Multilit, Accelerated Reader, whole school reward days each term and the use of a behaviour book.

 

The school community of Mount Pleasant Primary School was quite active especially during the six weeks that I was there, with events happening every week such as Science Week, E-Safety Week, Book Week, Numeracy Week, the school concert, swimming program and whole school reward days. Parents of students were always visiting the classroom and being active in their child’s learning and school experience.

 

While at the school, I was placed in a grade 3/4 class of 18 students which became 27 students halfway through the year after one of the 2/3 classes was split up. Throughout the six week block I was planning and teaching lessons for both 3/4 classes, teaching up to 53 students at a time with there always being 2 teaching staff in the room as well as an integration aid for 2 hours each day along with myself. The students in the classes were a very broad range of learners, working at a wide variety of levels with some students working one year ahead of the expected level and others working one and a half years behind.

 

My overall experience at Mount Pleasant was pleasant and an invaluable learning experience.