Additional Support Programs for Students
Additional support programs at Melton Secondary College
Melton Secondary College is committed to ensuring every student achieves success in their learning. The college offers additional support in Literacy and Numeracy across year levels 7-10 and has multiple programs running throughout 2024 to cater to student needs.
Students are identified as needing additional support in a variety of ways including Essential Assessment, NAPLAN data, semester reports, teacher judgement, and skill-based screeners.
Numeracy Support
The 2024 Numeracy Support program, which encompasses an in-class support model, is already underway this term.
Up to five times a fortnight throughout term one, our tutors work with selected year nine students in a small focus group, within timetabled mathematics classes. In term two, tutors will work with year eight students.
The aim of the targeted focus groups is to identify student strengths and areas for improvement in mathematics, while building on existing skills and knowledge to keep students engaged, motivated to learn and on track to reaching their potential.
Tutors work on building student confidence, continuing to extend their learning and developing their capacity to work independently at a more challenging level. The work completed with tutors complements the explicit instruction from their classroom teacher during mathematics classes, with an emphasis on being able to confidently articulate the processes used to complete tasks.
Ongoing progress is monitored and discussed between the classroom teacher, tutors and team leaders in order to continue meeting students at their level of need.
Literacy Support
After introducing phonics instruction to our reading program last year, Melton Secondary College has continued in 2024 to enrol at-risk readers in Sounds-Write, a highly structured, systematic phonics program that explicitly teaches students the key skills required to be effective readers and spellers. These skills need to be learnt to automaticity so learners can focus on more complex aspects of reading and writing.
Our reading support program allows students to practise, consolidate and internalise effective reading and spelling strategies, which assists their ability to decode and construct meaning; in turn, students can experience greater success in accessing the school curriculum via increasingly complex texts.
Students are organised into small groups based on their specific needs, which are determined through the analysis of diagnostic assessment tools. Small-group learning offered through focused, regular sessions, is an evidence-based approach for improving student learning outcomes.
Literacy Intervention staff also provide targeted support within junior English classes.
Tutor Learning Initiative (TLI)
The Victorian Government has once again continued its funding of the Tutor Learning Initiative throughout 2024. This initiative is designed to address the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on student learning and engagement in Victoria.
Tutors join and strengthen the already-existing Intervention programs at Melton Secondary College, which allows us to reach more at-risk and vulnerable students across the school.
A wide range of data is used to identify and monitor the progress of students participating in the Initiative, which encompasses both an in-class and small group withdrawal focus for students in need of extra Literacy and Numeracy support.
Middle Years Literacy and Numeracy Support (MYLNS) initiative
The MYLNS initiative provides intensive teaching support to government secondary school students in year ten who are at risk of finishing school without the Literacy and Numeracy skills they need for future work, education and training.
This initiative seeks to support and build on the work that schools are already doing to improve Literacy and Numeracy outcomes for all students, by providing additional teaching support to prioritised students as part of a whole-school approach.
The intended outcomes of the initiative are to:
- improve targeted students’ Literacy and Numeracy achievement to agreed standards
- support teachers to confidently teach Literacy and Numeracy to all students
- support and contribute to embedding a whole school community approach to improving Literacy and Numeracy achievement for all students.
Students who participate in MYLNS are nominated by the Department of Education. The MYLNS program will be underway shortly at our college.
Mathematics Advancement Program
Melton Secondary College currently offers a Mathematics Extension program for high achieving students who are identified through standardised data and by their maths classroom teachers based on the level of understanding they demonstrate in class.
The extension program offers selected students the opportunity to continue enhancing their skills and abilities in an engaging learning environment. Reflecting on problem solving approaches in a collaborative context allows students to further practice communicating and consolidating their mathematical thinking and expanding their mathematical flexibility.
The Year 7-9 Mathematics Advancement Program involves students attending a session on Thursday after school from 3:15pm - 4pm in M3A, which will appear on their Compass. Additionally, students are provided with weekly tasks on Showbie to complete outside of these sessions.
