Teaching and Learning 

The Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge is once again open for 2025 and will remain open until September 5th.

How to sign up:

Logging in with a Challenge passcode:

Teachers have (or will in the coming days) provide students with their log-in details on a sticker that has been stuck in the home reading diary/student diary. Please see your child’s classroom teacher if you have any queries about logging in, or you can’t find the log in details.

Go to the Challenge application.

1. Select the School/Student button.
2. Select the VPRC login option.
3. Enter your username and password.
4. Select Login.

PLANNING WEEK                 

As mentioned in the last few editions of our newsletter, this week is planning week. This means we have an adjusted specialist timetable in order to accommodate planning days for our classroom and specialist teachers. Students will have all their specialist classes in one day.

Please take note of  the planning days below for each year level and remind your child/ren to bring their PE shoes on this day please.

• Monday March 31st- Year 1 and Year 2
• Tuesday April 1st- Prep (*please note, this is also Cross Country day)
• Wednesday April 2nd- Year 5/6
• Thursday April 3rd- Year 3 and Year 4

Victorian Department of Education-       

Information for Parents and Carers

In 2024, the Minister for Education launched The Education State: Excellence in Every Classroom, which was developed with input from Victorian students, families, teachers and school leaders.

The Education State has 5 key priorities. The first, Excellence in teaching and learning, is about ensuring our dedicated teachers have the most effective teaching tools and support.

The department is implementing several reforms that support achievement in this priority. These include:

• working closely with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority to guide schools in implementing the updated Victorian Curriculum (Victorian Curriculum 2.0)
• providing access to teaching practices based on the latest evidence of what works best for all students, no matter which Victorian government school they are attending (Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM) 2.0)
• Victoria's reading position, which includes systematic synthetic phonics in F-2 and explicit teaching of the 'Big 6' through a structured literacy approach
• delivering high quality Victorian Lesson Plans to support schools’ implementation of the Victorian Curriculum 2.0 and the VTLM 2.0's evidence-based teaching approaches and practices.

In previous issues of the school newsletter this year, we have provided information regarding VTLM 2.0, and in information shared with our community over the last two years we have explained our shift in the teaching of reading in Prep-2 with the introduction of systematic synthetic phonics.

In addition to changes in the way reading (literacy) is taught, we are also making improvements to the way we teach maths, in light of the VTLM 2.0.

The updated Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM 2.0) is based on scientific evidence about how students learn and evidence of the teaching practices that best support that learning process.

This method involves teachers:

• working together to develop whole school approaches to behavioural expectations, cultural responsiveness and wellbeing support, so that classrooms provide a safe, predictable, learning-focused environment
• planning learning goals for each lesson and how they will sequence their teaching of the curriculum
• breaking down new content into manageable chunks
• using clear explanations, demonstrating new content and skills, and supporting students to practise them
• providing opportunities for students to review recent learning and apply it in new situations.

Evidence demonstrates that this approach supports students effectively to grasp new content, retain it and apply it with confidence.

These Department of Education initiatives are priorities in our Annual Implementation Plan (AIP) and we are committed to building teacher knowledge with these DoE initiatives.

You can find out more about the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model here.