Learning & Culture
Primary
Teaching and Learning ‘Value learning’
Providing a stimulating learning environment, our College enables all students, with the collaboration of teachers and parents, to achieve their personal best. Quality teaching and learning are a key focus of our College community.
Core Values: Hope and Integrity
Learning model/curriculum
Our Primary curriculum offers an integrated program which encompasses all key learning areas and provides our students with a very solid platform to continue their education at the secondary level. The curriculum offered to our Kindergarten to Year 6 students follows the New South Wales Education Standards Authority syllabuses.
Our pedagogical approach to the student’s learning centres around the Cultures of Thinking Model which has as its basis the key principle that improving learning and collaboration can be achieved with our students by honing group and individual thinking processes. This curriculum model strives to meet all our students as learners and their individual needs. In their classrooms teachers strive to create cultures of thinking with the students. They use a variety of methods and routines, including making time for thinking, developing and using a language of thinking, making the classroom environment rich with the documents of thinking processes, and making their own thinking visible, to name a few.
KLAs
Religious Education is at the centre of both our formal and informal Catholic school curriculum. This approach provides our students with opportunities for the development of their faith to permeate all aspects of school life and assists them to integrate into their lives their faith, values, cultures and traditions. The Diocesan K to 12 Religious Education Curriculum has three components:
1. The Foundations section which explores the context of religious education.
2. The call to Catholic discipleship.
3. The syllabus and the modules that are resource packages which assist teachers in the development of units of work.
- Grade, Primary and College Masses and Liturgies
- Daily Prayer
- Daily Religious Education lessons
- Mini Macks
- Visits to Aged Care Centres
- Youth Ministry
- Liturgical Dance
We believe that being able to competently communicate with others is central to our students’ intellectual, social and emotional development. Therefore, the learning experiences we provide in English, following the NSW Board of Studies syllabus, assist our students to make meaning through language and to use language effectively in a range of contexts and for a variety of purposes.
- Established practices in daily Literacy Blocks
- Shared and Modelled Texts for Reading and Writing
- Regular tracking of reading progress
- Public Speaking opportunities
- Debating opportunity with neighbouring schools – Year 6
The Mathematics curriculum follows the NSW Board of Studies Mathematics K-6 syllabus and actively involves the students with the use of a wide variety of materials and equipment. This area is organised into the five content strands of Number, Patterns and Algebra, Data, Measurement and Space and Geometry.
- EMU (Enhancing Mathematical Understanding) approaches used in classrooms and with targeted intervention groups
- Annual MAI (Maths Assessment Interview) for every student
- Maths Olympiad
- Maths Club
- Specialist Teachers for EMU in the Early Years and Middle Years
In Human Society and Its Environment (HSIE) our students learn about history, geography, civics and citizenship. This is done through the study of people, culture, societies and environments, often with integration across several Key Learning Areas (KLAs).
- Major Excursion in Year 5 to Bathurst Goldfields
- Major Excursion in Year 6 to Canberra
- Curriculum linked excursions and incursions eg Newcastle Museum, Reptile Park, Sydney Rocks Tour
Our Science and Technology curriculum provides the students with exciting, innovative and enriching learning experiences which link the teaching of science with the teaching of literacy. Through these learning experiences the students engage in investigations where they observe, classify, explore, predict, test, modify, explain and apply understandings to reach conclusions and evaluate findings.
- Curriculum linked excursions and incursions eg Planetarium visit
- Science experiments
Our Personal Development, Health and Physical Education curriculum incorporates teaching and learning experiences related to the health priorities for young people of building relationships, drug education, fitness and physical activity, child protection and nutrition. To assist with the Physical Education Strand of this Key Learning Area we have a specialist PE teacher who works with each class once a week.
- School, Central Coast Cluster and Diocesan Sports Carnivals
- Polding Sports opportunities
- K – Year 2 Swimming Programme
- Years 3 – 6 Surf Education Programme
- Central Coast Cluster Gala Days
- In-school Sports Clinics
- Life Education Van (Healthy Harold) annually
- Programmes such as Rock and Water, M-Power and Revved Up to support students personal growth and development
Our Creative Arts curriculum addresses the art forms of Visual Arts, Music, Drama and Dance. Regular learning experiences, often with integration across several Key Learning Areas (KLAs) are provided in order for our students to gain understanding and accomplishment in these art forms and for the students to appreciate the meanings and values that each of the art forms offers.
- Choir
- Band
- In-school Music Tuition available
- Footsteps Dance Programme
Extra curricular
At MacKillop, we strive to extend each child’s learning experiences through a number of extra-curricular options available:
- Lunch clubs such as Chess, Drama, Art, and Maths
- Mini Macks community service group
- House points (DOJO points) are accumulated by student achievements, tallied each week and an overall winner each term is announced at the end of each term
- Let’s Do Lunch to support students social development
- Choir
- Band
- In-school music tuition
- Premiers Reading Challenge
- ICAS Competitions
- Maths Olympiad
- Tournament of the Minds
- Diocesan Representative Sport
eLearning
At MacKillop Catholic College we are committed to the application of technologies to enhance learning. The MacKillop Education Model supports future readiness and in doing so the College commits itself to delivering learning that is supported by diverse methodologies including the integrated use of technology in the learning curriculum. To support families and students, the College is introducing a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Program from 2025 onwards. It is expected that the College will transition from its current iPad usage to a laptop commencing in Year 5 to Year 12.
To find out more about the program, transition timeline and specification requirements please download the MCC BYOD Guidelines 2025.