Our School

Our School

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Welcome to Larapinta Primary School.

Our school is an urban primary school located on the Western edge of Alice Springs, and nestled at the foot of Mt Gillen. It is one of the six government primary schools in Alice Springs. The school opened in January 1998. Over the past ten years, the school has grown and evolved and now boasts beautifully developed play areas and well resourced teaching and learning spaces throughout.

The school caters for children ranging from Transition to Year 6. The student body includes aboriginal students (one third total school population) and those with special needs. There is a preschool attached to the school that provides pre -primary education for four year old students. At capacity the preschool facility will accommodate eighty five students.

Much work was undertaken in the first few years to establish school procedures and, with the opportunity to work in a new school, staff focused strongly on a positive ethos and the development of meaningful policies that reflected current theory and best educational practice. This has resulted in the school pursuing activities such as team teaching innovations, a whole school Multiple Intelligence project, the First Steps Literacy program, effective assessment, recording and reporting techniques and a Peer Mediation program.

Midway through 2003 Larapinta was identified as the Northern Territory’s ’Lighthouse School’ in the Southern region. As such, it is a model of teaching and learning practices using Information Communication Technology (ITC) as a vehicle for whole-school and systemic change.

Over a period of 3 years, the school implemented many initiatives that stemmed from the Lighthouse Project focus, including a major change to the operational structure of the school through the development of Teaching and Learning Teams. Team teaching and dispersed leadership continue to be clear features of the school, with an ongoing emphasis on improvement and innovation in all areas of teaching and learning.

The school has a strong student-centred focus. Teachers appreciate that there are different learning styles among their students and that work needs to be presented in alternate ways to give students the opportunity to learn in different ways. In other words, it is clearly understood at Larapinta that teachers need a 'toolbox' of teaching strategies to use in the classroom. Whilst teachers provide for students in this way, an important aspect of student-centred learning is that there is greater responsibility on students to manage their own learning. Larapinta believes that for students to have shared responsibility for their learning they require higher order thinking skills and strategies. To support and scaffold thinking and learning, teachers and students use a range of tools including Bloom's Taxonomy, Multiple Intelligences, learning centres, Thinker's Keys and independent inquiry projects.

Larapinta also has a strong whole-school focus and many of its projects are targeted at developing positive working relationships across the whole school, such as Science Week, Education Week and Book Week activities.

Our web-site is a wealth of information and I would strongly encourage you spending some time browsing through the links available if you wish to know more about our school. Of coarse, we love a chat and don’t mind you ringing at any time if you wish to know more. Please enjoy!
Regards,

Stewart Moyses
(Principal)

Larapinta Primary School, 2008