Empowering young people to be inspired, get connected, and make a difference!
To create innovative, small learning communities led by Advisors, who use the world as their campus, to support young people to develop personalised learning pathways focused on:
• their interests
• inspiring and stimulating content
• essential and emerging 21stcentury skills
• the use of real-world mentors and learning
experiences
To help them go on and lead purposeful and fulfilling lives.
Simply put, we value young people's learning time. We value them as individuals, and we want to make a difference to their lives by offering a meaningful learning adventure relevant to the world they are growing into.
The traditional education model was born out of an era when intelligence was focused on content knowledge and where there was a need to grow an industrialised workforce. Whilst we value knowledge, the world and the workplace have dramatically shifted.
Success in the 21st-century will require design thinkers, innovators, change agents, and entrepreneurs – people who are able and empowered to adapt to a quickly changing world, take charge of their work choices, communicate effectively, and turn ideas into action.
We believe education must evolve to reflect this shift.
We have taken the Australian Curriculum and 21st-century educational goals and developed a unique model of Curriculum, which we call our Learning Continua. This Learning Continua differs from traditional curriculums as it is not structured around year levels or subjects. Instead, it sets the pathway of learning that each student progresses along at their own pace to achieve Silkwood's ten 21st century Aims. There are seven continua broken into smaller pathways, including developmental year level and individual student learning progressions.
Each student is on their own learning journey at Silkwood. They set goals with their Advisors (Teachers) linked to achieving our ten 21st century Aims while achieving the requirements of Australian Curriculum Standards.
They do this in small class sizes of 10 - 18 students to ensure our Advisors get to know their students well. To do this, we work on 2 - 3 year learning cycles. Each year level remains with their Advisor for a minimum of 2 years.