Junior Primary
Our junior primary class is designed to lay a strong educational foundation for your child. We collaborate closely with local kindergartens to ensure a seamless transition, helping students to adjust to both our school environment and our distinctive learning methods.
The junior primary teaching and learning is centred around explicit teaching, focusing on foundational number concepts through the Bond Blocks program. This program is meticulously crafted to develop essential mathematical skills in an engaging and structured manner. In literacy, we emphasise the explicit learning of phonics in alignment with the Department Scope and Sequence, ensuring a solid grasp of reading fundamentals.
We employ research-based strategies from the Australian Curriculum, including synthetic phonics and hands-on problem-based learning. Our approach to learning is not just about abstract concepts but about practical, real-world application.
Additionally, we are privileged to have access to multiple nature play spaces, including on-site and just down the road at the Lenswood Centennial Park. These spaces provide students with valuable opportunities to engage with nature and learn through play-based activities. Research highlights the benefits of outdoor learning, demonstrating that hands-on exploration can significantly enhance learning efficiency. As Dr. Karyn Purvis notes, “Scientists have recently determined that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain – unless it is done through play or hands-on investigation, in which case, it takes between 10-20 repetitions.”
Middle Primary
We support your child’s transition through the school with a consistent approach to teaching the core subject areas. We use Phonics UK readers to continue to develop reading skills and begin to transition students to short novels and more complex texts. We continue to use Brightpath to assess your child’s progress in writing and use these ongoing formative assessments to ensure a targeted, individualised approach to improving writing. In mathematics, we strive to use low floor, high ceiling learning activities to ensure that all students can be engaged regardless of their level of readiness.
Our classroom teacher in middle primary has a unique specialisation and passion for physical education. This skillset is used each year throughout the teaching of the health and physical education curriculum. Through a comprehensive sport education unit that incorporates all areas of the curriculum, all students begin to demonstrate excellent leadership, team building, and cooperative skills. Our middle primary teacher also prides himself on student voice within the classroom. A consistent approach is used to ensure that all students feel that they are directors of their own learning. This promotes independence and creates a strong intrinsic motivation within our students. These positive traits are then carried with all students as they transition to upper primary and to secondary schooling.
Upper Primary
Following their final transition into our upper primary class, your child will work in a composite class which provides high levels of challenge, collaboration and problem solving for your child. We focus on ensuring students are “high school ready” by continuing to build independence and resilience which is a focus throughout the whole school. Our upper primary students develop a strong voice in their learning and are provided with high level structure, but also choice in their learning. This is evident in the “genius hour” program, where students are allocated a portion of their time to follow a passion and develop their own unit of work that links to the curriculum. Our class teacher works with students to identify an area of interest and then unpacks how this fits into the Australian Curriculum. A few examples of this include:
- Linking early childhood education to oral language and English: two students linked their passion for early childhood education and developed a unit of work that they then went and taught at Lobethal Kindergarten. They met with kindy staff to negotiate key learning areas and then planned and taught a number of sessions at the kindy.
- Understanding pneumonics (Science) and building a skill tester: Three students were interested in building a skill tester that actually worked. They researched pneumonics and created a skill tester that was fully operational. The science and problem solving involved was high quality and was a hit throughout the whole school.
When you visit our school for a tour you will have the opportunity to talk with our senior students about some of their genius hour projects.
