At Pakenham Hills Primary School, our teaching programs are created based on the Victorian Curriculum and assessment data gathered about the skills and abilities of our students. Teams of teachers plan together to deliver a comprehensive curriculum to engage and prepare students for the challenges of primary and secondary school. Our school motto, ‘Life is for Learning’ also informs our instruction as we foster a love of learning and the development of a growth mindset. Teachers report against the relevant curriculum achievement standards twice a year and produce semester reports to update parents on their child’s learning. Throughout the year, teachers are also available to meet with parents upon request to discuss a student’s progress.

In the classroom, learning intentions are shared with students at the beginning of each lesson to make explicit the learning about to occur. Success criteria, in the form of ‘I can’ statements, are also shared with students to describe the steps needed to achieve the learning intention. These statements are linked to our curriculum objectives and students’ learning goals. Through our PHPS instructional model, which is based on the Gradual Release of Responsibility model, students review prior learning, receive explicit instruction on new learning, participate in guided practise with the teacher and their peers, with corrective feedback provided by the teacher, before attempting independent practise. At the end of the lesson, learning is reviewed, assessed and reflected on.

Students requiring additional support or extension in any learning area are provided with Learning Statement (LS) or an Individual Learning Plan (ILP). These documents are developed by teachers, in consultation with students and parents if appropriate, and details the goals and strategies necessary to continue learning growth. These are shared with students and parents to promote student agency and develop the home-school partnership. These documents are reviewed formally every 6 months, with new goals selected for the upcoming semester. In some cases, a Student Support Group (SSG) meeting be held between teachers, parents and any required support services to discuss the goals set out and review progress made.

Many classes at Pakenham Hills Primary School are supported by a full-time Education Support staff member who works with individual students or small groups to support learning or provided additional support which is relevant to a student’s Learning Statement or Individual Learning Plan.

Assessment is ongoing at Pakenham Hills Primary School and used to inform teachers’ teaching and planning. Through pre-testing and post-testing, teachers measure their students’ growth and reflect on how methods of instruction have been effective. If appropriate, this information is also shared with students and parents so that they can share in celebrating growth. Informal, formative assessment occurs daily in our classrooms through short activities on mini-whiteboards and questioning of all students. Teachers use a range of strategies to check the understanding of all their students and use the information to adapt their current or future lessons. A range of tools are used for assessment at our school, including: ACER PAT tests, Essential Assessment, English and Maths Online Interviews, Jolly Phonics Sound Check and Sparkle Assessment (from Decodable Readers Australia). Our Year 3 and Year 5 students also undertake NAPLAN tests in March of each year.

We are also able to offer additional support for students who need to revise prior learning through our Intervention programs, Starting to Achieve Reading Success (STARS) and Getting Ready in Numeracy (GRIN). These daily, short, small-group interventions are provided to students who have been identified through data analysis as requiring support. Their progress in the intervention is reviewed through assessment and discussions between the intervention and classroom teachers. For students requiring extension, our school has a High Ability Practise Leader (HAPL), who facilitates student participation in the Victorian High-Ability Program (VHAP) and Victorian Challenge and Enrichment Series.

Students at Pakenham Hills Primary School learn to read and write through a structured literacy approach. This approach reflects current research on best practices for teaching, drawn from the Science of Reading and Learning, and a range of evidence-based strategies. At the beginning of their school journey, students are supported to learn phonological awareness skills, which help them tune into sounds, rhymes and syllables. This leads to daily phonics lessons, where students participate in the Jolly Phonics program, which is a systematic, synthetic and multi-sensory phonics program. This has been adapted by our teachers to suit our context and the needs of our students. Students learn sets of letter sounds, with matching Cued Articulation actions, and practise applying these by blending and segmenting words. For example, once students learn the first three sounds – /s/, /a/, /t/ – they practise reading words like at and sat by sounding them out. Our school is currently investing in a range of high-quality decodable readers to match our phonics program which will support in class and home learning. Students are asked to learn some ‘Tricky Words’ by sight, which are irregular words or high-frequency words that include sounds they haven’t learnt yet but are necessary to read books, e.g. the, they. Students’ progress through the program is continually monitored and additional support is applied through revision or in class intervention.

Through our reading lessons, students receive opportunities to develop their oral language skills, receive explicit vocabulary instruction and are supported to develop their comprehension through book studies. These lessons focus on building up students’ vocabularies and background knowledge in a variety of areas through high-quality literature. Students are also supported to develop their fluency when reading through daily opportunities to read aloud.

In Writing lessons, students begin to learn to write by developing their fine motor skills and ability to form letters correctly. Using their understanding of phonics, they learn to write short decodable words and sentences. Explicit instruction around the parts of a sentence and sentence construction ensures students have a strong grasp of what a sentence must include in order to make sense. This supports their ability to write longer, more complex sentences and paragraphs. Alongside this, the genres of writing are taught, including recount, narrative and persuasive writing, and practised. Students write about real life experiences or texts that they have read in class, and are encouraged to experiment with vocabulary and sentence structures as they find their voice as an author.

At PHPS, we aim to promote and foster an “I can do it” attitude (growth mindset) in all students towards mathematics. Teachers provide experiences that encourage student engagement and opportunities for students to struggle productively with maths problems. Teachers plan tasks that allow for differentiation and collaboration so that all students can participate at their level of development.  They give regular constructive feedback and celebrate successes. Importantly we aim to teach concept before procedure so that students can reason and apply procedures accurately and efficiently to solve problems. We encourage all students to think and talk about their reasoning and to be ready to justify their responses and solutions.

Teachers base their mathematics planning on a robust understanding of the Victorian Curriculum, its Learning Progressions, Numeracy Focus Areas and Big Ideas in Number. We use formative assessment and regularly check for students’ understanding within each lesson.