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Learning and Wellbeing
Through embedding a culture of thinking, we aim to develop the positive social, personal and learning dispositions of our students, enabling them to thrive in the contemporary world.
Our Learning and Wellbeing Curriculum has been designed based on 4 core beliefs
All students have the right to learn, and deserve 100% of our input regardless of their ability.
All students can learn when they are provided with a safe and supportive environment.
Positive relationships and connections are paramount to a student’s success.
All teachers can learn and grow when they are provided with opportunities to share practice, reflect, collaborate, and celebrate.
These core beliefs have allowed us to focus our teaching and learning on some key foundational pillars:
Differentiated Learning is key to ensure students stay at the centre of everything we do. This allows teachers to target specific learning needs to individual students, groups of students and the whole class through a rigorous assessment process.
Development of a Professional Learning Culture of reflection and feedback, ensuring we are targeting student learning, as well as teacher needs. Our beliefs of life-long learning and onsite and ongoing development of teacher expertise will be supported through dedicated time and space to develop their skills to deliver and enact high-quality pedagogy and instruction.
Positive Behaviours and Restorative Practices is key in developing and maintaining safe and supportive learning environments, as well as building strong relationships with students and the community, through the recognition of our School Values. We have a core belief that all children have the right to recovery and that by building positive relationships, students feel safe and nurtured. This in turn supports students in taking risks in their learning, and showing resilience. It provides the right environment for students to build their social and emotional skills to be kind, caring and respectful members of the community.
Our Curriculum:
Our curriculum programs have been structured into 5 key areas:
Literacy
Numeracy
Inquiry
Wellbeing
Specialist
Literacy
Our core learning is the development of high-quality sequenced and explicit learning experiences, which focuses on the foundations of learning, as well as develops student’s critical and creative thinking skills. Teachers invest time in research to find evidenced-based teaching practices which will support learning and growth of all students.
At Deanside Primary School, we want students to become readers and writers. The development of language creates confident and resilient communicators who can think critically and creatively about the world around them. Literacy encompasses the connections between Reading and Viewing, Writing, and Speaking and Listening, and is guided by the Victorian Curriculum and our school’s guaranteed and viable curriculum.
By building a love of reading and writing through the exposure to high quality literature and mentor texts, with clear links to authentic purposes, students can make connections, think critically, and have a deep understanding in their learning. We will do this by building independence through book choice (relaxed, just right, stretch) and independent reading/writing time, which will allow students to practice and apply the skills and/or strategies, and give students the voice and agency into their own learning. The explicit teaching of Phonics and Phonological Awareness will be vital in the Early Years, where it will ensure success in reading, writing, and spelling. We do this through explicit and scaffolded teaching, which is driven by student data, and differentiated at the student’s point of need.
Numeracy
Numeracy learning at Deanside Primary School is led through an Inquiry approach to learning, with an authentic link to real life contexts. Students move from concrete hand-on experiences to a connection to math symbols and processes, which allows students to gain a deeper understanding and be able to apply these to real life contexts. We believe that students should be involved in open ended problem solving through a clear scope and sequence which is embedded through the Proficiencies of Understanding, Fluency, Problem Solving and Reasoning. The use of collaborative and independent instructional practices will support students in learning mathematical concepts and skills.
Inquiry Learning
Our Inquiry Learning focuses on developing student’s knowledge and thinking skills within Science, Humanities and Geography. The inquiry learning is student-led learning, but teacher framed. This allows students to have a voice in the direction of learning, which supports the teacher to plan and frame learning according to the needs of our students.
We use an inquiry model of learning of tuning in, finding out/sorting out information and learning, taking action in our community and reflection. Students apply their literacy and numeracy skills into science, humanities, geography, civics and citizenship, which is embedded within the capabilities of Critical and Creative Thinking, Ethics, Intercultural Understanding and Personal and Social learning.
Wellbeing
At Deanside Primary School, the relationships and connections we create with our students are pivotal in establishing exemplary learning behaviours, which are underpinned by our school values. We have a mutual understanding of the agreed upon positive language approaches, expectations, and restorative practices to ensure success in our student’s learning and behaviour.
Our Wellbeing framework encompasses the teaching of social and emotional learning, and focus’ on developing student’s:
- self-regulation resilience and care through the introduction of the Zones of Regulation;
- social skills through the enactment of Morning and Afternoon circle time, as well as explicit targeted teaching based on our school values;
- teaching of positive behaviours linked to our school values through our school-wide behavior expectations;
- empathy, care and respect through Rights, Resilience and Respectful Relationships.
Specialist Programs
Our current Specialist Program consists of The Arts (Visual Arts and Performing Arts), Physical Education and S.T.E.M. As the school continues to grow, we look forward to introducing a Kitchen/Garden Program.
