Curriculum

Windang Public School is dedicated to improving outcomes of students through continual investment in the learning and professional practice of our teaching staff so that we can be even better educators! Our passionate and professional staff engage in frequent professional learning as a whole staff, in our stage teams, during school hours and in our personal time. 

In 2023, we are building better writers and readers through engaging in The Writing Revolution which is an evidence based teaching pedagogy by Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler. Each fortnight, our teaching teams learn and implement an explicit sentence writing strategy. We then reflect on our learning together, share our lessons and consolidate our practice. 

Here are some quotes from students in 4/5 Meerkats about their writing revolutionary learning activities:

Bronte

“Expanding sentences: they have helped me with detailing my sentences, they have also helped me expand on key words and important information. This will make my stories more creative. They have also helped me learn more ways to make my sentences sound better.”

Hayden

‘We have learnt how to make boring sentences sound exciting with lots of detail.”

Reese:

"We have learnt how to dress up sentences so they sound more interesting. We were trying to find the who, the what, and the why by locating information in the text. By expanding the sentences you are trying to get the reader to want to read more."

Lexie:

"The activities helped me with understanding the deeper meaning of the text."

Having high expectations for our learners means we try to get every ounce of learning out of every moment. Some of the engagement norms that we regularly practice are shown here. These engagement norms help students to more actively participate in each moment,  read and re-read text to increase fluency and comprehension, explain and clarify their thinking with their partners and share their ideas with the class. We are beginning to use more gestures to help deepen students learning and understanding of concepts.

Koa

"Mirrors on helps us to go over what we have learnt."

Chloe

"Mirrors on let's us move our body which helps me learn."

Johnny

"It helps me remember the important parts."

We are working to improve the way we teach spelling. We have explored Lyn Stone's Spelling for Life, Beneath the Surface of Words by Sue Hegland, Spelling - The Next Step by Anne Italiano and many more to teach spelling more explicitly and effectively. In particular, we have really improved both our and students understanding of morphology (meaningful word parts) and othography (the spelling system of a language). Here are some examples of the learning activities students are engaging in to strengthen their ability to spell words accurately, make meaning from base words and affixes, apply spelling concepts to other vocabulary and pull apart words. Students are breaking apart words, building words, and working with words within sentences and paragraphs. Their improved ability to apply their knowledge to comprehend and spell unknown words they encounter in texts has been very exciting for us to see. We love seeing their learning growth.