Learning - Classroom Learning
CURRICULUM AND LEARNING AT UPPER FERNTREE GULLY
We pride ourselves on getting to know each and every one of our students as an individual learner with their own needs and goals. We know that students have different interests and endeavour to provide learning that caters to developing the whole child. The Victorian Curriculum outlines what is important for all students to learn at different stages. We understand that students are at their own individual stage of learning. Our goal is to help every child achieve 12 months growth every year.
VICTORIAN CURRICULUM
The Victorian Curriculum outlines a common set of knowledge and skills required by students to be active, informed citizens with social skills and confidence to be a lifelong learner.
More information about the Victorian Curriculum can be found at: www.victoriancurriculum.vcaa.vic.edu.au/
The Victorian Curriculum comprises learning areas and capabilities.
Learning Area
The Arts
? Dance
? Drama
? Media Arts
? Music
? Visual Arts
? Visual Communication Design
English
Health and Physical Education
The Humanities
? Civics and Citizenship
? Economics and Business
? Geography
? History
Languages
Mathematics
Science
Technologies
? Design and Technology
? Digital Technology
Critical and Creative Thinking
Ethical Capability
Intercultural Capability
Personal and Social Capability
LEARNING AT UPPER GULLY
Our students learn knowledge and skills through all areas of the curriculum. Our focus on developing knowledge, skills and behaviours including physical, personal and social growth, in all areas across the curriculum provides opportunity for students to apply their learning to new and different circumstances.
The consistency of the approaches and resources at Upper Ferntree Gully provides teachers with the knowledge to develop learning tasks that cater to all of our individual learners. Our teachers meet weekly to plan and discuss the learning of students in our school. They plan, assess and moderate to ensure that they are supporting all of their students learning.
We use a variety of resources to support our teaching and learning across the curriculum. These resources provide a consistent approach and skills and strategies that support learning at all levels.
ENGLISH
CAFE Reading Menu
Comprehension ? Accuracy ? Fluency - Expanding Vocabulary
CAFE provides students with an opportunity to set reading-related goals in order to understand and develop different strategies used by successful readers. The CAF? reading menu caters for learners at all levels.
VOICES or 6 + 1 Traits
The Six plus one Trait is a way of teaching, modelling, and assessing the instruction of writing. The Six Traits of writing are Voice, Ideas, Presentation, Conventions, Organization, Word Choice, and Sentence Fluency. This is linked with our Writer?s Notebook approach that provides for individual choice and learning.
Soundwaves Spelling
The Sound Waves phonemic approach uses a sound-to-letter strategy, which acknowledges that sounds can be represented more than one way in written form. This synthetic phonics approach focuses first on the basic units of sound in our language ? phonemes. It then explores the letters that represent these sounds and how they can be put together to form written words. Soundwaves utilises a variety of learning strategies including hands on, oral and technology.
MATHEMATICS
Our student goal setting and student led learning is a successful approach across the school. Students are assessed in an area; their learning and misconceptions are identified and shared with them. Students then set goals based on the next goal in that area. They complete a variety of activities including hands on, online and focus groups to learn their goal. They then complete a post-test to see how much growth they have made and if they need to, identify new goals.
DIGITAL LEARNING
We utilise technology as a tool that can be used to support all types of learning. We believe that there is a balance between all types of learning including technology. We provide opportunities for students to work with robots and coding. We use Google Apps to support students and teach skills in years 3 to 6. Reading eggs is used to support literacy at home and school in our junior years. See Saw is an electronic learning journal where students can publish their work with photos and video for you to be able to see on your device. Logins and access to these is provided at the beginning of the school year.