Principal's Message
Welcome to Week 6 of Term 3 at Leongatha Primary School
Welcome to Week 6.
Welcome to Week 6 – Term 3
It is hard to believe that we are already into Week 6 of Term 3. As we move through the second half of the term, our focus at Leongatha Primary School this week is learning — and, more specifically, ensuring that every student is making meaningful progress in their learning.
At Leongatha Primary School, we believe that every child can learn, every child can improve, and every child deserves to experience success. Our responsibility as educators is to understand where each student is currently at, identify what they need to learn next, and provide the right level of challenge, support and feedback to help them move forward.
This work is strongly aligned with the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model 2.0 (VTLM 2.0), which provides a shared framework for high-quality teaching and learning across Victorian government schools. VTLM 2.0 places the student and their learning at the centre of our work and reminds us that effective teaching begins with knowing our students, understanding their learning needs and responding deliberately to those needs.
Knowing where students are at
A significant part of our work at this point in the year is carefully examining student progress.
Our teachers are using a range of evidence to understand how students are progressing across the curriculum. This includes classroom observations, student work, formative assessment, reading and mathematics data, NAPLAN and other assessment information, as well as the conversations teachers have with students every day.
Importantly, we are not simply looking at whether a student has completed a task or achieved a particular result. We are asking deeper questions:
What does this student know? What can they do independently? What are they ready to learn next? What might be getting in the way of their progress? And what can we, as teachers, do differently or more deliberately to help them move forward?
This is the essence of responsive teaching.
Accelerating learning
For students who are demonstrating that they are ready to move further, faster, our role is to provide appropriate challenge and opportunities to extend their thinking.
Acceleration is not simply about giving students more work. It is about providing the right learning at the right time.
Our teachers are carefully considering how we can deepen understanding, increase the complexity of thinking, develop independence and provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge in new and challenging ways.
We want our capable learners to be appropriately challenged rather than simply moving through work that they have already mastered.
Supporting students who need it
At the same time, we recognise that some students require additional support to achieve the next step in their learning.
This may mean additional explicit teaching, targeted intervention, further practice, scaffolding, small-group instruction or providing students with multiple opportunities to consolidate important knowledge and skills.
This is an important part of our approach to Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). We want to identify students who need additional support early and respond with precision rather than waiting for students to fall significantly behind.
Our goal is not to lower expectations for students who need support. Quite the opposite. We maintain high expectations while providing the additional support necessary for students to meet them.
Explicit, responsive teaching
VTLM 2.0 places a strong emphasis on the quality of teaching and the importance of teachers knowing what students need to learn and how best to teach it.
You will continue to see this reflected in our classrooms through explicit teaching, clear learning intentions and success criteria, modelling, guided practice, independent practice and regular checks for understanding.
Our teachers are continually asking themselves:
Did students learn what we intended them to learn?
If the answer is yes, we consider what comes next.
If the answer is no, we adjust our teaching.
This is what responsive teaching looks like in practice. It is not about teaching a lesson and moving on regardless of the outcome. It is about using evidence of learning to inform our next instructional decision.
Learning is a partnership
Of course, learning does not only happen at school.
Parents and carers play an incredibly important role in developing positive attitudes towards learning. Asking your child what they learned today, encouraging them to explain their thinking, reading together, practising important skills and celebrating effort and improvement all contribute to a strong learning culture.
One of the most powerful messages we can give children is that learning is a process.
Being challenged is part of learning. Making mistakes is part of learning. Having to practise something several times is part of learning. Asking for help is part of learning.
We want our students to understand that they are not defined by what they can do today. What matters is their willingness to learn, their capacity to persevere and the progress they make over time.
Our focus: every student, every classroom, every day
As we enter Week 6, our staff are taking a particularly close look at student progress.
We are celebrating the students who are making strong gains.
We are identifying students who are ready for greater challenge.
We are identifying students who require additional support.
And, most importantly, we are considering what we can do as educators to ensure that every student continues to move forward.
This is at the heart of our work at Leongatha Primary School.
We are not satisfied simply because students are busy. We want students to be learning.
We are not simply interested in where students are now. We are interested in where they can go next.
And we are committed to using the evidence we have, the expertise of our teachers and the principles of VTLM 2.0 to make that next step as purposeful and successful as possible.
Thank you to our families for continuing to support your children and our school. Together, we can create a culture where learning is valued, progress is celebrated, challenge is embraced and every student is supported to achieve their potential.
Welcome to Week 6 — let's make it a great week of learning at Leongatha Primary School.
Warwick Ford
Principal