Richmond North Public School is a midsize outer suburban school located 50km northwest of Sydney. The school is a focal point of the community and caters for students from a range of socio-economic backgrounds, Kindergarten to Year 6. Richmond North Public School has 15 teaching staff with a student enrolment of 265. The school has strong relationships with its small but energetic P&C consisting of parents, caregivers and the wider community. Richmond North PS has a proud sporting history, provides opportunities in the performing arts and promotes student responsibility, respect, lifelong learning and a desire for students to strive to achieve.
Vision
Richmond North Public School engages students, staff, parents and community in a shared learning journey. Students are nurtured, guided, challenged and supported to achieve their personal best in a learning environment of high expectations and explicit teaching practices. We develop within our students holistic integrity through the development of key habits of character including: respect, resilience, courage, inclusion and optimism. We prepare our students to become well-rounded, confident, responsible and academically curious individuals who 'strive to achieve' their full potential.
Three Dimensions of Student Achievement
When students enter adult life, they will be celebrated not for their performance on basic skills tests, but rather for the quality of their work and their character. That’s why Richmond North PS builds students’ capacity for three dimensions of high achievement - Mastery of Knowledge and Skills, High Quality Student Work and Character.
Our Character Framework
Empowering Leadership
Schools create a strong and cohesive school vision focused on all three dimensions of student achievement, continuous improvement, and shared leadership responsibilities. Leaders shape school structures to provide equitable education to all students, celebrate joy in learning, and build a schoolwide learning community of relational trust and collaboration. Leaders (including teacher-leaders) work collaboratively with families, staff, and students to make evidence-based decisions that enable all students to achieve. Empowering Leadership is part of the foundation that supports all other layers of the framework.
Crew Culture
Schools establish and cultivate Habits of Character ( e.g., Respect, Responsibility, Courage, Kindness) and promote and discuss these habits every day, within and beyond classrooms. The school community exemplifies educator Kurt Hahn's vision that ''we are all crew, not passengers," working together as a team for the common good. The school staff models the positive values and behaviors that guide students to be their best and most successful selves. Social, emotional, and academic skills are fostered in concert. Crew Culture is part of the foundation that supports all other layers of the framework and results in the ultimate outcome: students become active contributors to a better world.
Deeper Instruction
What teachers do matters. Teachers lead Deeper Instruction by crafting lessons and designing rich learning experiences that challenge, engage and empower students in consequential work and build genuine understanding. Teachers embrace high standards for academics and character, and cultivate student independence, and leadership. As much as possible, students work as scientists, historians, writers, mathematicians, and artists.
Compelling Curriculum
Schools use compelling curriculum that inspire all students to grapple with demanding, meaningful content and produce high quality work; master required standards; elevate student collaboration, voice, · · g, and reflection; promote equity; and prepare all students for college, career, and community contribution. Teachers use protocols to create opportunities for all voices to be heard, and texts and activities that honor the knowledge, languages, beliefs, and skills that exist in the cultures and backgrounds of students and their families. Compelling Curriculum is part of the foundation that supports all other layers of the :framework.
Student-engaged Assessment
Students are leaders of their own learning, tracking progress toward standards-based learning and character targets, setting goals, revising, and reflecting on growth and challenges. Students and teachers regularly analyze data that include assessments, reflections, and student work, and use those data to inform goals and instruction. Students regularly present evidence of their achievement and growth to a range of audiences.
Agency
Students have Agency; they are empowered to take responsibility for their own growth and act as leaders with their peers. Students are active citizens, advocating for equity in their school􀀧 community, and society.
Belonging
Students--all students- have a Sense of Belonging as a valued part of an inclusive learning community. Students can bring their full identities to school, and trust that they will be respected for who they are and also inspired to be their best selves.
Purpose
Students engage in challenging, meaningful learning experiences, taking on work that is worth doing. They develop a larger sense of Purpose when they see how their work matters to their own learning and the community. They are "getting smart to do good."
Ethical People
Students become Ethical People, who treat others with respect and compassion, and stand up for what is right ( e.g., empathy, integrity, respect, compassion).
Effective Learners
Students become Effective Learners who do more than they think possible, developing the mindsets and skills for success in college, career, and life (e.g. initiative, respons1biliry, perseverance, collaboration).
Contribute to a Better World
The centerpiece of the framework: students Contrlbuting to a Better World, putting their learning to use as active citizens, working for social justice, environmental stewardship, and healthy, equitable communities
( e.g., citizenship, service, advocacy). This outcome is a key goal of character development in EL Education.
Character is developed over time. Each layer provides a foundation for the one above. All the core Character outcomes are part of EL Education's three-dimensional view of student achievement.
Our Habits of Character
In the EL Education model, students' character development is equally as important as producing high-quality work and mastering knowledge and skills. They articulate Habits of Character that enable students to become ethical people.
Habits of Character are habits which all members of our school community, students and staff aspire to. They help us prioritise socio-emotional learning as equal to academic learning and support students in becoming effective community members, ethical people and contributors to a better world.
Optimism
Resilience
Respect
Inclusion
Courage
Mastery of Knowledge and Skills
Explicit Instruction
Explicit Instruction is based on learning theory in educational neuroscience and on international evidence-based best practice.
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Explicit Instruction uses a set of teaching techniques for modelling skills, guided practice and independent
practice, along with the Six Givens that set the
context for effective explicit instruction. The approach
is effective for classroom learning and teaching or
online.
Explicit Instruction
The Six Givens
The Six Givens are a set of fundamental elements that are present in all Explicit Instruction
classrooms and learning spaces. They cover the nature of the classroom setting, the
management of teaching and how the teacher interacts with students.
Explicit Instruction
Lesson Sequence
The heart of the Explicit Instruction Programme is a set of Activities that are applied to lesson intentions.
The activities start with a Warm-Up and progress through a teaching sequence of Lesson Introduction,
I Do/We Do/You Do and Plough Back and Why.
The aim of the sequence is to move from modelling, through guided practice to independent practice.