At Covenant, our deepest hope and desire as Christian educators is to point our students to Jesus. Whether we are engaging with the latest curriculum reforms, designing dynamic learning tasks, or developing and nurturing our students, this our ultimate purpose.
As our teachers sit and wrestle with new syllabuses, we always ask ourselves, “How can I teach this concept from a Christian perspective?” or “What biblical threads, or common themes, can be woven throughout this unit to help direct our students to God?”
At Covenant, our teaching programs are written by first articulating the Big Picture – an understanding of the 'why' and 'what' we are trying to teach through the unit. Our teachers use a curriculum-writing framework developed by the National Institute of Christian Education called Transformation By Design, which starts with identifying:
- the Big Idea – a summary of the main focus for the unit, written from a Christian perspective
- the Biblical Perspective – articulating how the unit fits in with the Biblical story of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Renewal
- the Interwoven Threads – the responses that we wish to draw out and provide students with an opportunity to live out their learning, and
- Enduring Understandings – the knowledge that we hope our students will know and walk away with, having studied this unit.
Once we have developed our Christian rationale, our focus then turns to the syllabus itself and we carefully devise a teaching program that delivers the content and outcomes through rich learning experiences. While programming, we are also planning differentiated learning activities to cater for all of our students and their abilities.
In line with our school’s Vision and Mission, our parents can be assured that our teachers are committed to developing teaching programs that are Christ-centred, biblically grounded, academically rigorous and culturally engaging. We do this because we believe in a shared purpose, which then drives and informs our everyday practice.
This is what you sign up for when you chose Covenant for your children – that they will receive a distinctly Christian education.
And this is what our teachers sign up for when they chose to follow God’s calling and come to work at Covenant.
We thank God for our faithful and dedicated teachers who love the Lord and love teaching our children.
Silva Mekerdichian
Director of Teaching and Learning