Connections create community

Auburn’s motto – learn from the past, connect with the present, create our future – underpins our learning and wellbeing approaches.

Connections are made in many ways between all members of our community. Student to student connections, teacher to student connections, and connections between home and school all play an important role in the wellbeing and learning for the children at Auburn PS.

Some examples of the way we promote and create opportunity for connection are outlined below.

Connect

Connect Groups are cross level groupings created with the purpose of building relationships between students, and other teachers, across the school. During weekly Connect group sessions, lead by our senior students, social skills, team building and character strengths are addressed through engaging activities.

Building connections across a range of year levels and classes provides students with a sense of community. They are also provided the opportunity to be a role model or mentor and have role models within the school, and engage with children who are older and younger than themselves, and at varying stages of their development, as we do across our lives.

Teaching and learning approach

Our flexible learning spaces, and multi age class groupings of year 1/2, year 3/4, and year 5/6 are another way that connections are created between students and between teachers and students.

As in the Connect groupings, multi age class groupings allow students to develop social and learning partnerships with children who are the year older and the year younger than them, building their networks, and providing opportunities to learn and practice a range of social skills, equipping them for the world in which they will live.

The flexible learning environments, with adjoining spaces and flexible furniture allow students to develop connections with teachers beyond their immediate class teacher, and students beyond their own class. This not only provide opportunity to widen social connections, but the opportunity to learn with and from other students. The ability to team teach in the flexible learning spaces provides students with the opportunity to build a relationship with and work with other teachers beyond their own, which as they move through the school, assist with the transition to secondary school.

The following links provide some thought provoking resources that may assist in understanding our approach to teaching and learning.

•  This amazing discussion and animation gives the late Sir Ken Robinson’s challenging ideas about schools and schooling.
•  A series of slides showing various learning space options from around the world.