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ELEMENT ONE: Students and the Community

Teaching and learning in Religious Education at St John Fisher College is responsive to the needs and religious backgrounds of students and the contemporary contexts for learning in the Religious Education classroom.

DEMOGRAPHICS

St John Fisher College is a Catholic secondary girls’ college catering for Years 7 to 12. It is located in Bracken Ridge, one of the outer northern suburbs of the City of Brisbane, and attracts students from a large number of primary schools across the northern suburbs of Brisbane.

 

It has enrolments across the full range of academic ability including a number of students with verified disabilities. The students also come from the full range of socio-economic backgrounds. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of students from multi-cultural backgrounds especially non-European. Eleven percent of students are identified as coming from a language background other than English and three percent identify as indigenous or Torres Strait islander.

Every effort is made at St John Fisher College to ensure that all who seek to share and celebrate our Catholic Christian heritage (parent, students, staff) feel welcome and respected in their own faith journeys both through participation in our Religious Education classes and celebrations, and in opportunities to expand their knowledge of, and commitment to their own faith traditions. Teachers also seek to incorporate flexibility in classes to ensure that an inclusive and ecumenical spirit pervades all Religious Education classes and prayer celebrations.

ECUMENICAL CONTEXTS OF THE COLLEGE

At each year level at St John Fisher College, teachers engage in planning to develop a year level plan that responds to the diverse needs of all students. Planning is a collaborative endeavour and effective planning ensures considered pedagogy and learning experiences that enhance student outcomes and cater for the diversity of learners at SJFC.  Whole RE Dept. meetings occur at a minimum of twice per term, with individual year level planning meetings occurring on a more regular basis. Teachers at each year level work together to plan activities and assessment based upon the program. See EVIDENCE for Documents including:

 

  • RE Dept. Handbook

  • RE Dept. Staff List (Team leaders at each year level highlighted)

 

Planning incorporates the following:

 

Teacher documents:                                                                                             

  1. Syllabus or approved curriculum

  2. Work program

  3. Semester Planner

  4. Lessons in digital form

  5. Items for Improvement Sheet (except for ongoing assessment + notebooks)

  6. Assessment (including modified assessment)

     

Student documents:

  1. Student Learning Plan  (SLP)

  2. Assessment Calendar

     

Copies of relevant syllabi, assessment guides and semester planners are available in each year level in the Religious Education folder on the College Intranet P Drive. Copies of Student Learning Plans and Assessment Calendars are located on the SJFC portal for staff, students and their parents. (See EVIDENCE for samples).https://portals.bne.catholic.edu.au/schools/sjfc/Pages/default.aspx

 

Parents and the wider community are informed about curriculum at various times throughout the year, including explanations of the relevance of particular excursions and other activities to the curriculum.

 

 

College Newsletter - March 5th, 2015

College Newsletter - October 16th, 2015

OUR VISION FOR RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

St John Fisher College shares and promotes the Vision for Religious Education articulated by Brisbane Catholic Education and the wider church.  This vision includes the two dimensions of formation, namely of students’ religious literacy and their personal faith:

 

The schools and colleges of the Archdiocese of Brisbane aspire to educate and form students who are challenged to live the gospel of Jesus Christ and who are literate in the Catholic and broader Christian tradition so that they might participate critically and authentically in faith contexts and wider society. 

 

The Vision for Religious Education also appropriately aligns with the goal for learning and teaching as articulated in the Brisbane Catholic Education (BCE) Learning and Teaching Framework (2012):

 

As a Catholic Christian community we educate all to live the gospel of Jesus Christ as successful, creative and confident, active and informed learners empowered to shape and enrich our world.

 

The Vision for Religious Education challenges students to be a religious voice in the world. The Vision gives greater prominence and a renewed orientation to the critical interpretation and evaluation of culture. Through vibrant and engaging Religious Education, students become active constructors of culture rather than passive consumers.

Religious Education at St John Fisher College seeks to develop the religious literacy of students in light of the Catholic Christian tradition, so that they might participate critically and authentically in contemporary culture.

In this College, religious literacy includes ways of talking, acting, creating, communicating, critiquing, evaluating, participating, ritualising, theologising, worshipping, reading, reflecting, and writing with others in a variety of religious and secular contexts. Examination of the sample units, for example, will reveal how teachers and students seek to integrate the two dimensions of religious education, so that religious literacy and faith formation can complement each other as students seek to find meaning in their place and time. The integration of both dimensions in the daily life of the school includes prayer in every classroom to start the day and the timetabling of the mandatory hours of classroom-based engagement with the religious education curriculum at the College. (See SCOPE & SEQUENCE as well as assessment tasks which provide evidence of RLOS activities.).​

Jesus Christ is always the centre of this Vision. Through engagement with both dimensions of Religious Education, students are challenged to be cultural agents in light of the Gospel; authentic witnesses to the mission of Jesus Christ in the world today

The College Badge with the Cross at its heart, the dove representing God guiding and giving life to the community and the hands symbolizing the presence of God looking after us, demonstrates the importance which this community places upon the willingness of students to stand up for Christian values in their lives.

THE CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

At St John Fisher College recognition is given to the four contexts identified as having a significant impact on Religious Education in contemporary Catholic schools. They are the Societal Context, Ecclesial Context, Educational Context and Digital Context.

 

Societal Context
Like all Catholic and ecumenical schools of the Archdiocese of Brisbane, St John Fisher College operates in a complex and ever-changing environment. Contemporary students are immersed in a global world and from an early age are exposed to a range of values represented through diverse media.

As a consequence, our College is continually challenged to engage families in Religious Education in rich and relevant ways. Our Religious Education program seeks to reflect a Catholic Christian worldview that integrates faith, life and culture. At the same time it seeks to embrace an ecumenical perspective and reflect the multi-faith context and reality of this school. The Scope and Sequence showing the units of work studied at each year level, provides evidence of the importance placed on a worldview which takes heed of the religious and cultural context of our school.

Ecclesial Context

At St John Fisher College as is the case with many Catholic schools in the Archdiocese, an increasing number of students and their families are less engaged with the formal life of the Church than in the past. Consequently, for many students, the culture and language of religion is underdeveloped.

 

This College, along with many Archdiocesan schools, increasingly provides the introductory and developmental understanding and experience of Church for students and their families. This is supported when the school is a place where students and their families encounter the mission and outreach of the Church, especially through pastoral care and the experience of Catholic Christian community. In this community, such activities include prayer and liturgical activities e.g. Spring Liturgy, Mary MacKillop Feast Day Mass, social justice activities such as the Bracken Ridge Homework Initiative and whole year Reflection Days thus enabling our College to promote knowledge, deep understanding and skills about the Catholic and broader Christian tradition within the broader evangelising mission of the Church.

Educational Context

St John Fisher College, along with each Archdiocesan school, seeks transformation of the whole person so that those in the school community are empowered to live the gospel of Jesus Christ in their everyday lives. In the Catholic Christian tradition, education is a work of love and service. At our College we seek to nurture and develop the faith of individuals in ways that are mindful of their cultural and religious identity. The sewing of toiletries bags for the Romero Centre refugees, the development of an assessment task based upon the St Vincent de Paul Society, which is part of the Year 9 RE curriculum, together with Caritas and Timor Kolega Café and Card activities, are examples of the ways that the classroom learning and teaching of RE seeks to transform the whole person.

Religious Education in the Archdiocese of Brisbane builds on best practice of the broader educational community. The classroom learning and teaching of religion reflects the philosophy, content, structure, academic rigour and assessment and reporting modes used in other learning areas. The religious life of the College forms and skills students to confront the complexities of life in contemporary society.

Digital Context

Religious Education in St John Fisher College seeks to engage students in the critical, creative, and responsible use of digital tools which is an important component of digital citizenship. It includes provision and use of electronic resources to enable students to express their knowledge and understanding in relevant ways. With a one-to-one laptop program, students are encouraged to research and present information individually and in collaboration with others, present responses using Moviemaker and other multimodal tools, using stimulus and tasks that have been emailed or transmitted to them in an electronic format.

Written assessment pieces are submitted using the digital tool Turnitin, and students access Clickview and other media forms such as suggested in the RE Learning Bytes to access as wide a selection of material as possible. This enables them to express their learning in rich and relevant ways and connect with individuals and communities in a global context.  See EVIDENCE for digital response to Fakebook (Yr 8 Term 3 task)

OUR BELIEFS ABOUT LEARNERS AND LEARNING IN THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION CLASSROOM

Foundational to the shared work of teachers at St John Fisher College are the beliefs they have of the learners they serve. The BCE Learning and Teaching Framework (2012) explicitly articulates the beliefs and the responses that flow from these beliefs within schools in the Archdiocese. In conjunction with this Framework, a series of local descriptors has been developed which reflect the beliefs of the community about the attributes of a John Fisher Learner.

 

John Fisher Way of Learning

 

Excellent learners:

  • Seek challenges

  • Take risks

  • Think critically

  • Persevere

  • Believe in themselves

  • Reflect on their efforts

  • Seek ways to improve

  • Find joy in learning

  • Set goals

  • Ask questions

  • Offer answers or points of view

  • Learn from mistakes

  • Solve problems

  • Share their learning

  • Listen to ideas

  • Change their ideas in the light of new evidence

 

Every learner is created in the image and likeness of God and, inspired by the Spirit, responds with passion and creativity to life.

 

  • Every learner seeks to find meaning in life and learning and, in the Catholic Christian Tradition, we find meaning in the person and teachings of Jesus to grow as pilgrim people.

 

  • Every learner is a lifelong learner, with a desire to search for truth and do what is right; accountable for choices and responsible for actions.

 

  • Every learner is in some respect, like all others, like some others, like no other and we respond creatively, flexibly and with a futures orientation to ensure dignity and justice for all.

 

  • Every learner can achieve success in life and learning where diversity is valued and shared wisdom contributes to decision-making that enriches and enlivens our world.

 

  • Every learner brings to the learning experience their own richly diverse life journey to contribute to a community in communion, empowered by the Spirit to be at the service of others.

 

At a class and individual student level, at St John Fisher College the interests, religious backgrounds and learning needs of students inform the development of work units.  Data retrieved from the BI Tool, Census Application and other sources are used to inform planning decisions for learning.  (See EVIDENCE for SRS Cohort Report.)

 

Teachers use this information to interpret the curriculum flexibly to meet the individual learning needs of students, both gifted and those with special learning needs, and to personalise their learning by:

  • adjusting the way in which students are taught and the means through which they demonstrate their learning; 

  • using the extended general capabilities learning continua from the Australian Curriculum to adjust the focus of learning or to emphasise specific aspects such as higher order cognitive skills;

  • providing students with opportunities to work with content in more depth or breadth

  • providing students with additional time and support and drawing from content at different levels along the Year 7 to Year 10 sequence.

  • Use of the requirement for diversity in assessment tasks required in the planning template.

        (See EVIDENCE for sample of a modified task provided for students with special learning needs.)

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