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Welcome to Mount Lawley's Middle School

Communities

There are four distinct Communities within the Middle School, two in Year 8 and two in Year 9. Each Community has its own unique "home" in the purpose-built Middle School buildings, and is timetabled separately from the others.

The community spaces were designed to reflect the emphasis on community as well as being flexible enough to cater for a wide variety of teaching strategies and other uses. Students also have access to the school's specialist facilities for their classes in Physical Education, Technology & Enterprise and the Arts.

The Communities each have about 120 students, which means they are small enough to ensure that quality relationships can develop between teachers, students and parents.

In 2010, due to the smaller cohort of Year 8 students, there will be one Year 8 Community consisting of six classes.

Teaching Staff

To help with building relationships, and to maximise academic achievement, the students remain in the same Community with the same teachers for two years Each team is headed by a Level 3 Learning Team Leader who takes responsibility for every aspect of the learning and social / emotional development of the students in his or her Community. He or she also takes responsibility for curriculum leadership of one of the major learning areas across the whole Middle School.

Class Groupings

Within each Community there are four classes, one for each of the Houses which make up the House system at Mount Lawley. These classes are the Form groups and the students remain in these groups for English, Mathematics, Science, and Society & Environment.

Students are re-grouped for their classes in the other four Learning areas of Health & Physical Education, Languages Other Than English (LOTE), Technology & Enterprise, and the Arts, but these classes will still only include students from within their own Community.

Classes are not streamed in the Middle School, but students who have a need for either learning support or extension are catered for within the regular classes. There are two Literacy and Language Support Teachers in the Middle School, one for each year group, and extension opportunities are discussed in a later section of this Handbook.

One of the four classes in each Community will be either a Selective Language Program class or a Special Visual and Performing Arts class.

Parent Contact

Parents who have any concerns regarding their child are encouraged to contact either the child's Learning Team Leader or Form Teacher.