Head of Gioia House

It is hard to believe that we are now mid-way through Term 3. Last week we welcomed prospective families to the College for our Discovery Tour. Students were great ambassadors for the College, showing visitors around and telling them about all the wonderful opportunities on offer at the College. 

The Gioia students continue to enjoy a range of co-curricular and enrichment activities, including sports, music, debating and public speaking. Last Saturday, I enjoyed watching our Year 5 and 6 Netball teams compete for a place in the final. Both teams displayed outstanding sportsmanship and teamwork. We wish the Year 6 team good luck as they play in the final this Saturday.

Intervention and Differentiation 

At Gioia House, we are doing our very best to meet the needs of all students by designing engaging and targeted teaching and learning experiences. To assist the development of students who require a little more support, we have two intervention programs that work to develop their foundational understandings in Literacy and Numeracy. 
The Literacy targeted intervention has been designed to support students develop the application of their phonemic awareness and comprehension. The program is founded using the Macquarie University MultiLit and MacqLit Programs and is supported by a combination of other resources underpinned by current educational research.

The primary aim of the Numeracy program is to develop students’ understanding of number concepts and build student confidence in Mathematics.
 
Our in-class enrichment program extends the knowledge and skills of every student in every class, regardless of their starting point. The objective of differentiation is to lift the performance of all students. Differentiation benefits students across the learning continuum, including highly able and gifted students.  
When differentiating teaching to suit the needs of individual students, teachers use a variety of strategies to help students become personally invested in and take ownership of their learning.  Gioia House teachers use our comprehensive data to decide what to differentiate in their instruction, choosing from content, process, product and learning environment. 

Also, students in Gioia House are offered a range of co-curricular activities to further extend their interest and skills outside of the classroom hours.

We continually seek ways to modify and tweak the classroom and our teaching strategies to meet all students’ needs.

Stella Azizian
Head of Gioia House