St Monica's Parish School
St Monica's Parish School, Walkerville, is a Catholic, community oriented school of approximately 260 students, catering for Reception to Year 7 children. As a Catholic school, we seek to invite our community to deepen its relationship with Jesus Christ. St Monica's has a proud Josephite tradition that permeates the life of the school today, embracing the love, understanding and acceptance of others.
Our school offers a safe, inclusive and positive learning environment where we work as a team to enable children to develop skills in personal responsibility where each child feels they are valued and an integral part of the school community. This creates a harmonious, safe, caring environment where children flourish. We are well respected for our high quality and innovative curriculum and for keeping children at the centre of our thoughts and actions. The staff works in collaboration with the wider community to provide challenging and relevant learning experiences for all children.
We believe that St Monica’s is just as much an educative workplace for its staff and community as it is for students. We invest a great deal of time and resources into our staff so that they are best able to create a contemporary, quality learning environment that reflects the needs and interests of all our students. We provide regular educational workshops for parents in areas such as ‘Reading with your Child’, ‘Made in the Image of God’, as well as supporting the Parish based Sacramental Program involving candidates and parents.
We support our gifted students through a broad curriculum as well as specific programs such as Tournament of Minds, Primary Mathematics Challenge and ‘Bright Sparks Breakfasts’. Children with learning needs are identified quickly and are supported through our Inclusive Education and Adaptive Education programs providing specific, personalised programs with individual goals complemented by other programs such as Reading Recovery, Rainbow Reading, Funtastics (Gross Motor).
In 2007, St Monica's Parish School was acknowledged with the National Literacy and Numeracy Award in recognition of efforts in supporting student learning in these areas. Also in recent years students at St Monica’s have received a number of state and National awards which reflect the quality of teaching and learning at the school. These awards include State Winners of Tournament of Minds (2005, 2006, 2007, 2011), National Winner of Tournament of Minds (2005) National Honours (2006), State Winner, Primary Mathematic Challenge, (2006, 2007, 2009), State Honours, Primary Mathematics Challenge (2009, 2011)
As a school community, we enrich our faith development through active participation in weekly gatherings consisting of Masses or Prayer/ Liturgies. St Monica's is also well regarded for our comprehensive sports / physical education program, for an engaging LOTE (Italian) program, the way in which creative arts are emphasised and celebrated, and the innovative approach and access to twenty-first century learning spaces and technologies as learning tools. Throughout the school day, children utilise classroom based Laptop Computers (Apple Macs) and each classroom has its own Interactive whiteboard which is used effectively to enhance learning and engage learners. Each class has its own Blog (Web-log) and parents can visit the site for updates, class information or to view some of the learning that is occurring. Our fortnightly newsletter is forwarded electronically to our community, reducing substantially the amount of paper we use.
All who visit our school are taken by the friendliness and enthusiasm of students and staff and the overall warmth of this proud and positive learning community.