Teaching and Learning

Leaders at Planning Sessions

From week 2 onwards, learning leaders and PCO will attend one of your 4 planning sessions. This is to ensure that teachers are confident implementing our 2026 priorities. Please refer to the table below and let your leader know where you are meeting.

NS: Nicole Seigel

NW: Nancy Wagner

AE: Alycia Egan

EL: Edwige Leroy

TH: Tim Hounsell

KC: Kim Carpenter

Wellbeing Lessons Timeslots - the Why

Wellbeing lessons are timetabled as a clear priority to support timely pre-correction and/or post-lunch conversations when issues arise. This proactive approach helps prevent minor concerns from escalating into larger incidents in the yard/classroom and supports positive behaviour. Teaching our CPS scope and sequence is essential to ensure students can learn at their best. When students feel happy and safe, meaningful learning can take place. This is aligned with our School Strategic Plan Wellbeing Goal: Enhance the wellbeing of all students. 

Nancy

Resources for English F-2

Just a reminder of some resources made last year that you are welcome to use:

Sound Intro Videos with cued articulation - These are divided into the Phonics Plus sets. It is a good opportunity to make sure you are saying the sounds correctly. You may also want to learn the sign that goes with the sound to help provide a visual stimulus. Here is a link to more information about its benefits.

Handwriting formation slides - The alphabet has been broken into 4 handwriting families used by the Vic curriculum. This makes it easier to teach by the shape. 

In Foundation - teach handwriting in the order you are teaching phonics. 

For Y1-2, you can teach in groups using the letters in the same family. 

In the slides you will see a video of the formation and direction of each letter. You can use this as a reference for yourself, or show the video in class.

If you have a student who has difficulty forming some letters or learning some letters, these videos can be sent individually to families on Seesaw/email. You can find them all in the folder Handwriting and Sounds.

Nicole

Afternoon of Maths Games - 26th February

As discussed during the Term 4 planning day, we will be hosting a an afternoon of maths games on Thursday 26 February (Session 5).

Michael Minas will present to parents from 2:00–2:40pm, then invite them into classrooms to play maths games their children have learned.

The purpose of this event is to showcase the strong maths learning at CPS and highlight the value of games as an effective learning tool.

Key takeaways for parents and carers (which will be par tof Michael's session):

• Children learn effectively through play, just as they do through formal methods (e.g. vertical algorithms, Kumon).
• Maths games can be simple and accessible.
• Parents can support learning by modelling thinking aloud and reinforcing effective strategies.

To support this, games should be simple and students should be able to:

• Explain the maths involved (e.g. place value, operations, probability, measurement).
• Verbalise their mathematical thinking and strategies.
• Play independently, with enough prior practice to organise and play without support.

You may choose to finish with a whole-class challenge involving parents (e.g. Strike or Beat the Teacher) at around 3:15pm, as a fun, inclusive way to conclude the session.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to Kim or I.

Nancy

For French Teachers: partnership with KHPS

This year will be our 4th year of collaboration with Killarney Height Public School, our partner school in Sydney. As most of you already know, KHPS and CPS are organising common events each term, our first major event being La Semaine de la Francophonie in Week 8 this term.  

The timeline of our events as well as all our shared resources can be found on the AAFEBS drive. If you are a new French Teacher and don't have access to this drive yet, send me an email so that we can add you ASAP.

Any question, come and see me or Marylne.

Caroline E.

Bilingual Curriculum Framework

The Bilingual Schools Network have engaged Andrew Scrimgeour, Adelaide University to develop a framework for the acquisition of a target language.

We are very excited that this is finally becoming a reality as the DET develop curriculum documents for every other learning area ... but not language learning in a bilingual context.

By working closely with Andrew, we hope to ensure that this work actually does achieve a viable curriculum document for meets our needs!

Marilyne Gayte has undertaken this role, to be our representative working with Andrew thanks to her expertise in curriculum development.

Marilyne will be working with Andrew on Tuesday 10 February from 9am - 12pm.