Curriculum

An Update from our Learning Specialists

The Learning Specialist role is a pathway for highly skilled teachers who want to stay in the classroom and work with other teachers to improve their practise. At Skye we have three Learning Specialists in the areas of Mentoring and Coaching, Maths and Literacy. Below they share their goals for Term Four.

Mentoring and Coaching

During Term Four staff will continue participating in Professional Learning Communities to plan, implement and monitor learning sequences based on student need. Staff collaboration and professional development will drive improved student outcomes across the curriculum. Peer observations and the implementation of High Impact Teaching Strategies will provide avenues for staff reflection leading to improved teaching and learning. 

Maths

What's happening in the Maths team?

In Term 4, the Maths Sub-School team will continue their work on problem solving in Maths by consolidating their knowledge of the lesson structure, where to find learning tasks and how to support students using enabling and extending prompts. We will be working on auditing our current resources (such as unifix, counters, playing cards, dice, MAB etc) and preparing a wish list for 2024 so that we can hit the ground running when we return in the new year.

How you can support our work at home!

As learning ‘takes a village’ and Maths is everywhere around us, we would love to see Maths learning happening at home. A big part of revamping Numeracy at Skye PS has focused on making it fun and enjoyable, not something people believe to be either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at, and we have done this by introducing several exciting games in our classrooms. Please take the time to ask your child about the Maths games they have learnt or check out Michael Minas’ website ‘Love Maths’ to support us in building positive experiences with Maths both at home and at school. 

Literacy

What's happening in the Literacy team?

This term the Literacy team is consolidating our work throughout the year on the 5 Pillars of Literacy; Oral Language, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension. We are developing learning sequences from Prep-6 , focusing on the explicit instruction of academic vocabulary and the study of word origins and meanings (morphology). This, along with building background knowledge in a wide-range of subject areas, all serve to improve overall reading comprehension.

What can you do at home?

You'll never hear a teacher say a student is reading too much! 

• Encourage your child to follow their interests and read a variety of non-fiction texts. These are instrumental in building background knowledge and fun to read at the same time. 
• If you haven't already, join your local library - they are an amazing resource with the most current and widest selection of books. And it's FREE!
• Read books outloud. Fluency, the ability to read at a good pace with accuracy and expression, is a primary indicator of reading comprehension. We encourage students at school to go 'over the top' when putting on character's voices. As you can imagine, kids love this activity.