Curriculum Updates

Tutoring

Tutoring will continue this term with small groups of students working with myself and Mrs Anne Thompson. The focus will be reading and mathematics this term. 

Reading at Home – Options!

Classroom teachers have communicated our school expectations for reading at home via Newsletters, but I wanted to remind parents that students have access to Sunshine Online books to read at home on their iPads. 

Teachers have given students their login details for this - it is a great resource to complement books taken home from class libraries. There are many authentic and decodable texts to choose from on this platform. If you need any help accessing this resource, please let your child’s teacher know. 

Reading at home is crucial for students to practise the skills taught at school and to reinforce the love of reading. Here are a few findings from research conducted by ‘Australia Reads’ in 2022. 

Changes to Curriculum

The Curriculum used in Victorian Schools has undergone review and a new version of the Victorian Curriculum has been developed for many learning areas, including English and Maths. This year, our teachers have spent the year in a familiarising phase to understand and use the new Maths Curriculum. As of next year, we will transition to using the Maths 2.0 Curriculum.

Next year will also see the implementation of the English 2.0 Curriculum and ‘Victoria’s Approach to Reading F-2’. To be prepared for this change, teachers will be involved in a Curriculum Day on Tues Nov 5th.

Victoria’s Approach to Reading F-2 includes the ‘Big 6’, which are already a strong feature of our current Literacy Instructional Model.

• Oral language – knowing and using spoken words to express knowledge, ideas and emotions

• Phonemic awareness –which is the knowledge of sounds (phonemes).

• Phonics – knowing the sound (phoneme) and letter (grapheme) relationships.

• Fluency – reading accurately and at an appropriate rate with expression.

• Vocabulary – understanding words in isolation and in context.

• Comprehension – making meaning from text which includes developing knowledge of grammar.

We will spend the day learning about the new curriculum and looking at new initiatives to trial and evaluate. As with all new learning, implementation is a process, not an event. Teachers will trial new strategies in a slow, steady but intentional way. 

PLC Foci – Term 4 

Our school’s PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) focus this term is on Engagement in Learning. Drawing on data from our Attitudes to School Survey, we are seeking to understand how challenged our students feel in their learning. 

Through professional learning and working with our students, we will investigate how we as teachers can provide learning opportunities that are engaging and at the ‘Goldilocks’ or ‘just right’ level for all students.