Malvern Valley
Academy
The Academy program fosters each students passions and curiosities through authentic investigations, whilst empowering students to be innovative, enterprising and adaptable. The program promotes life long learners who are motivated, confident and who are armed with the skills to use critical and creative thinking purposefully.
The Malvern Valley Senior Academy program provides an opportunity for each Grade 3-6 student to pursue their passions, whilst developing essential 21st century learning skills with a STEM focus.
This learning prepares students for the future world of work, and arms them with the following crucial life skills;
- Critical Thinking
- Problem-Solving
- Decision-Making
- Metacognition= Learning to Learn
- Confident Communicators
- Collaboration skills
In fortnightly Academy sessions students work with like-minded students, industry professionals and use a range of digital technology to develop knowledge specific to their chosen field.
Student Voice and agency is an integral part of the Academy, with students electing their program of choice and driving the direction of their investigations throughout the year.
Students work together to innovate, create and design solutions to real-world problems, using the Stanford Design Thinking methodology.
Coding Academy
Students will be given the opportunity to learn a variety of code languages and will move from ‘unplugged’ coding experiences to using various programs to design, create and market animations and video games. They will develop creativity, problem-solving and persistence skills and use mathematical reasoning and trial and error to sequence code.
Robotics Academy
Students will learn to use block code as well as writing simple code to program robotic equipment to perform simple movements. They will design pathways and program robots to move along these courses. Students will learn to build robots using bricks, motors and sensors. They will develop creativity, problem-solving and persistence skills and use mathematical reasoning and trial and error to sequence code.
Media Academy
Our media students will experiment in planning and creating news broadcasts using a variety of digital mediums, such as podcasting, print media and film. Students will learn about the importance of camera shots and angles, story boarding, conducting interviews, script writing and how the media persuades, informs and entertains citizens.
Entrepreneur Academy
Students will learn the skills of entrepreneurship to establish their very own businesses. This program will be based on the $20 Boss Program, which is a nationwide in-school entrepreneurship program for primary and secondary school students. The program aims to elevate and foster enterprise skills and their transferability, through the experience of building and running an enterprise. Students borrow $20 of start-up capital, launch and operate a business venture over the course of the Academy Program. The enterprises that are established are the students own and they will be encouraged to identify how they can use profits for community benefit. Market day, is the culminating task and will give the students the opportunity to sell their products and or services to the wider community.
Junior Academy
Our Junior Academy program provides each of the F-2 students with an opportunity to explore and ‘sample’ each of the Senior Academy areas in order to identify their own passion or interests. Students are explicitly taught the Critical and Creative Thinking Capability to hone the following skills:
- Posing and classifying questions
- Generating ideas that are new to them and making choices after considering personal preferences.
- Identifying words that indicate components of a point of view.
- Using reasons and examples to support their ideas.
- Expressing and describing their thinking
- Practise learning strategies, for example; drawing labelled deisgns or creating mindmaps
- Demonstrating and articulating problem-solving approaches.
Students work collaboratively to complete an investigation each term with a focus on:
- Coding
- Engineering
- Robotics
- Digital Technologies
- Design Technolgies
Our students learn about the stages the Design Thinking process and work through this cylce to solve authentic problems.
Design Thinking process
- Empathise– Seek to understand different perspectives and empathise.
- Define- Identify the problem and decide how to best find the answers.
- Ideate- Brainstorm and develop creative solutions to solve the problem.
- Prototype- Students bring their designs to life by creating solutions.
- Test- Students check and test their prototype and evaluate effectiveness.
