Learning and Teaching

Dear LPS families,

In my last edition, the banner photo featured our incredible Black Belt recipients, and I’m thrilled to say we have another name to add to the list! Congratulations to our newest Black Belt achiever, who will be announced next week! 🥋🎉 What an incredible, and record-breaking, year of Black Belt recipients! This is truly a testament to the dedication of our students and the inspiring support from our teachers and families.

Why we’re embracing Knowledge Rich Units in Humanities 

Building strong foundations for thinking, reading, and understanding the world

At Lysterfield Primary School, we are always reflecting on how we can best support our students to grow into knowledgeable, thoughtful and capable learners. This year, we have made a shift in the way we approach our Humanities curriculum, moving from an Inquiry-based model to a Knowledge Rich approach.

So, why the change?

Put simply, knowledge matters. For students to think critically, engage meaningfully in discussions, and make sense of the world around them, they need a strong foundation of background knowledge. It’s this bank of information that allows them to comprehend complex texts, understand new ideas, and build connections across subjects. Without this foundation, students are left with little to think with.

Our Knowledge Rich units are carefully sequenced and designed to ensure students are gaining important information about history, geography, science, civics and the world around them. These units are not just about memorising facts, they are about deeply understanding key concepts, building curiosity, and setting our students up to make sense of the big ideas in the world.

This term, students across the school are diving into rich and engaging topics:

• Prep – Farms, Seasons & Weather, and My History
• Grade 1 – Taking Care of the Earth, Ancient Egypt
• Grade 2 – Geography of Australia, Great Inventions
• Grade 3 – Australia and its Neighbours
• Grade 4 – Local Government, World Mountains
• Grade 5 – Exploring the Continent, Natural Disasters and Geographical Features
• Grade 6 – World Deserts

Each topic has been carefully chosen to build on knowledge from previous years and to support students in making deeper connections as they progress through school.

Over the past few weeks, Mrs Zahra Harvey, Mrs Lex Fisher, and I have had the pleasure of observing Knowledge Rich lessons across the school. The rigour and engagement we’ve seen has been outstanding. From Grade 1 students cheering as their teacher puts on the “Earth Hat” to signal it’s time to learn about caring for our planet, to Grade 3s confidently discussing how climate differences affect countries around the world, our students are showing us just how powerful knowledge can be.

We are incredibly proud of the way our teachers are teaching these units and how enthusiastically students are responding. This shift is about ensuring every child at LPS is equipped not just to answer questions, but to ask deep, thoughtful ones of their own, questions that come from a place of understanding and curiosity.

We look forward to continuing to share highlights from our Knowledge Rich journey. Thank you for partnering with us as we support our learners to increase their knowledge and expand their world.

Kristine Roose | Assistant Principal - Learning & Teaching