Big Picture Learning (BPL)
Croydon Community School is committed to educate our students under the Big Picture Learning Design. We base our curriculum on the premise that each student has unique interests, needs and abilities. The key to achievement lies in fostering students’ individual interests, encouraging their active participation in the learning process and developing the ability to apply knowledge and skills to real life experiences and challenges.
Big Picture Learning
Distinguishers
Foundational to the BPL is the 12 Distinguishers. They ‘distinguish’ Big Picture Learning from other forms of learning. They influence everything that advisory teachers, leaders, students and families try to do at Croydon Community School
Find out more here.
Big Picture Learning
Learning goals
At Croydon Community Schoo, these goals guide our educational philosophy. These goals are designed to foster a holistic approach to student learning, encouraging students to engage deeply with their education and the world around them.
– Empirical Reasoning
Big Picture Learning
Advisory
Advisory is a key feature of our learning design. Advisories at Croydon Community School cater for approx. 17 students through Years 7 to 12, with a diversity of student interests and passions.
An Advisor is more than a classroom teacher; they are an integral part of an environment that allows students the freedom to find themselves with the support and motivation of inspiring adults. Advisors create a safe, trusting, and collaborative learning environment that enables students to learn through school and community experiences. The Advisor supports students to develop as unique, mature, able, knowledgeable, and responsible individuals.
Advisors key responsibilities are to be responsible for the two-to-five-year educational journey of approximately 17 students and their successful graduation and/or transition to becoming higher learners.
Lucas has been passionate about trains before he could walk! His father, grandfather, and family, have been involved in both model railways, Puffing Billy, and generally immersed themselves in the culture of “rail fanning”. It has been a privilege and a joy to watch Lucas grow his skills with his reading, writing, and numeracy through his love of trains, and the Big Picture Learning design framework, which enables him to realise his dreams of pursuing a career in any aspect of railway engineering, with relevance, rigour and reward.
Big Picture Learning
Exhibitions
One of the most important aspects of the Big Picture Learning Design is the exhibition.
These exhibitions form the culmination of the work produced by a student over the term in an authentic and powerful assessment of learning. A detailed exhibition is completed by students at the end of every term, demonstrating their growth as a learner throughout their time at Croydon Community School.
Each exhibition represents the learning the student has undertaken over the term and provides them with an opportunity to publicly show their achievements, discuss their journey as a learner, understand their learning, identify the roadblocks and celebrate the successes.
Students can invite a number of people to their exhibitions and present evidence and artefacts of their learning through their learning plan and portfolio collection of their work. Here they show how they have pursued a deep and rigorous project, contributed to their LTI (Learning Through Internship) placement, where applicable, and highlight their growth over time.
Exhibitions develop over time and are expected to be around 40 minutes in length. Everyone has a contribution to make to the exhibition either by way of questions, or feedback to the student. Students are given warm and cool feedback providing opportunities to further develop and grow.
Exhibitions have in many cases, exceeded our expectations of student achievement!
Students seeking the Graduation Portfolio entry into university, need to complete detailed exhibitions as this is one of the key components of gaining university entry in a personally selected field.
Big Picture Learning
Internships
At Croydon Community School, we believe that learning can happen anywhere, not just inside classroom walls. Learning Through Internship (LTI) involves students spending a day a week within a community organisation or business of their choosing to become an active member of their team.
Internships can include interviewing an expert, spending a shadow day with an organisation or the internship can run over the school term or longer. Learning Through Internships’ allow students to experience real world aspects of their passion/interest area and workplace, make their own networks and make strong connections with an adult with similar interests, called a mentor.
Under the direction of a mentor, students produce meaningful work at their placements in the form of a project. Students and their mentor within the organisation design a project around their passion, one which will give the student skills and also contribute something helpful back to the organisation or business. They present their LTI project at school as evidence of their learning within their exhibition.
Project work is designed to foster broad learning as well as their vocational and employability skills. The internship is integrated with the student’s learning goals and school-based study. Students include LTI’s as part of their term learning plan.
Big Picture Learning
VCE VM and BPL
The VCE Vocational Major (VCE VM) has been designed around the 5 pillars of Applied Learning.
This aligns directly with the Big Picture Learning Design:
- Individualised projects based on/around interest to engage the students in their learning.
- Strong connections to community, class and advisors/teachers.
- Rigorous integrated research
- Learning in the real world – doing, experiencing, reflecting and relating knowledge and skills.
To learn more about the Senior Pathways for our students, click here.
Principal
Ms. Bronwyn Harcourt
Assistant Principals
Mrs. Kaye Bhan
Mrs. Annie Eastwood
Address:
61-77 Croydon Road
Croydon, VIC 3136
Postal:
P.O. Box 239
Croydon, VIC 3136
Telephone:
(03) 9724 2900
Facsimile:
(03) 9724 2999
