At Lysterfield Primary School, we use the Theories of Action of Curiosity and Powerful Learning to deliver a rigorous and consistent curriculum.
These include Consistent Teaching and Learning Protocols, Harness Learning Intentions, Narrative, & Pace, High Expectations & Authentic Relationships, emphasise Inquiry Focused Teaching, Set Challenging Learning Tasks, Frame Higher Order Questions, Connect Feedback to Data, Commit to Assessment for Learning and Implement Cooperative Groups.
This framework supports our students’ curiosity, enriches their learning skills and promotes their spirit of inquiry. Through this framework, we have developed school-wide approaches to instructional practices in English and Mathematics.
Our teachers plan, resource, deliver & evaluate their programs as a team. This eliminates variation from classrooms and ensures all students have equal access to the same learning experiences and opportunities. Through this team approach, students are known by more than one teacher, therefore more than one teacher is supporting their success at school.
At Lysterfield PS we have a whole school approach to classroom management. All teachers create positive and secure learning environments, which promote a growth mindset and allow curiosity to flourish. Research shows that students with a growth mindset are more interested in learning, more eager to take on challenges, and more academically successful. LPS students are supported in developing a growth mindset to ensure they will ask more questions, seek out challenges that allow them to learn something new, put in the extra effort required to succeed and value learning the right way over the easy way.
Learning experiences are challenging, authentic and engaging and involve practical ‘hands-on’ activities and real world experiences whenever practicable. Problem solving and “being brave” is promoted, along with thinking skills, to enhance student learning.
With the support of their teachers, our students identify their learning needs and set achievable goals. The students have many opportunities to pursue their own interests and strengths. We assess our students to individually target their point of need according to the school’s Assessment and Reporting schedule.
Curriculum Design – Inquiry Learning
At Lysterfield Primary School, we aim to develop students who are curious about the world around them and both confident and creative in the application of their knowledge and skills. In a rapidly evolving world, we view this as pivotal to their future success. To achieve this, the school provides sequential and targeted teaching and learning programs. These programs ensure that our students are highly literate and numerate critical thinkers and problem solvers equipped to handle any challenge.
At LPS we are committed to offering a thorough, sequential and comprehensive curriculum for our students based on the Victorian Curriculum. The Victorian Curriculum is designed as a continuum of learning that is specifically focussed on individual student learning growth. All students have access to a curriculum program that comprehensively addresses the standards and capabilities of the Victorian Curriculum at their developmental level.
At LPS, our commitment to key learning areas includes daily explicit instruction and application in English and Mathematics. We place a strong emphasis on literacy and numeracy, as we believe this is an essential pathway to success.
Inquiry based learning stems from the constructivist theory, which seeks to ensure students are actively involved in their own learning. The urge to inquire activates thinking on many levels; when we seek to make sense of the world around us, we involve ourselves in the learning process. Children learn best when they ask questions, investigate solutions, create new knowledge, discuss their discoveries and solutions and reflect on new learning.
With this as our premise, staff design Inquiry units based on the ‘Know and Understand, Be, Do’ (KUBD) construct. We ensure that we provide opportunities for students to develop their Knowledge & Understanding of key concepts, build on their capabilities and skills (Do) and heighten and develop an awareness of their own and other’s attitudes, motivations and dispositions when engaging with these learning designs.
Our students complete four inquiry units per year that address the science and humanities learning areas of the curriculum. These include Science, History, Geography, Civics & Citizenship, and Economics & Business. We also incorporate the capabilities of the Victorian Curriculum into the design of these learning opportunities: Critical and Creative Thinking, Ethical, Intercultural and Personal and Social.
These units are implemented across the whole school, using a two-year cycle, and culminate each term in a “Celebration of Learning” day at the conclusion of each term.
English
At Lysterfield Primary School, we are committed to delivering the English Victorian Curriculum using evidence-based approaches in an engaging and innovative way. Our goal is for every child to be a successful reader, writer and presenter.
Each child engages in Literacy for two hours each day, where they are provided with opportunities to learn and apply their skills in a variety of contexts. Our daily reading and writing sessions are taught using a workshop approach, whereby teachers explicitly teach a new skill or strategy, students practice this with others and finally they work on it independently. Students engage in small group and individual instruction to work on their personalised goals where ample feedback is provided to promote learning growth.
Word Work
Word Work encourages students to develop skills in analysing words structurally, which assists in their ability to spell and understand the meaning of words. Across P-6 students engage in daily Word Work, examining the phonetic and morphological structure of words and learn about the word origins (etymology).
Reading
At LPS, we aim to build a love for reading by encouraging students to read a wide variety of texts, in different contexts, and for different purposes.
In P-2, students focus on the ‘Big Six’: oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. These elements are embedded throughout our Reading Workshop in an explicit, cumulative and structured manner. Reading accuracy and fluency is promoted through the use of our Systematic Synthetic Phonics approach, alongside explicit teaching of accuracy strategies that are applied to decodable texts. Language comprehension is promoted through the use of high quality literature, questioning and explicit teaching of comprehension strategies.
As students' decoding and fluency skills increase, the 3-6 years focus on comprehending a wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts. Students are explicitly taught strategies to understand fiction in relation to the plot and setting, characters, theme and ideas, vocabulary. When reading non-fiction, students focus on identifying the main idea and supporting details, text features and subject specific vocabulary. These strategies encompass the key skills of monitoring for meaning, engaging in background acknowledging, predicting, summarising, inferring, text structure, questioning, determining importance, visualising, synthesising, analysing and critiquing.
Writing
Our Writing Workshops are an opportunity for students to engage in the writing process. Students learn strategies that help support their ability to generate ideas, plan, draft, revise and edit their own writing. Every student has a Writer’s Notebook - a place to keep memories, photos and observations about their world. This is an important tool in our Writing Workshop to promote continuous writing ideas.
In the P-2 years, there is a focus on composing pieces for a range of purposes. In the early years, students' learning goals encompass conventions (encoding/spelling, sentence structure, punctuation and letter formation), idea generation and word choice.
As students have developed the foundational skills in the early years, our 3-6 students focus on the craft of writing - having a clear purpose and audience to connect with. Students are explicitly taught strategies that are related to the 6+1 traits of writing: Voice, Organisation, Ideas, Conventions, Excellent Word Choice, Sentence Fluency and Presentation.
Speaking and Listening
At LPS, students have many varied opportunities to speak and listen to others throughout the day. This includes instructional routines such as ‘Turn and Talks’, reflective activities such as ‘Author’s Chair’, and participation in class discussions. Throughout grades 3-6, students engage in ‘Book Clubs’, where students are explicitly taught communication skills in relation to active listening, disagreeing respectfully, elaborating and keeping conversations moving. Within the Senior School, students participate in ‘Speech Club’ - students learn to prepare speeches for a variety of purposes and listen with intent.
Maths
Lysterfield Primary School teaches Mathematics in line with the Victorian Curriculum F-10. The curriculum is comprised of three strands – Number & Algebra, Measurement & Geometry, and Statistics & Probability, as well as four proficiencies – Understanding, Fluency, Reasoning and Problem Solving. Students have every opportunity to learn and develop their potential, and teachers are committed to explicitly teaching Mathematics every day.
Mathematics lessons at LPS follow a structure that includes mathematical routines or ‘Hooks’ that promote whole class mathematical discussion and reasoning, and encourages students to see Mathematics as a flexible subject. Students are invited to prove, justify and make conjectures during Hooks, as well as experience multiple exposures to learnt skills as a way to support retrieval practise.
Number & Algebra is a key focus each week and students are taught skills and strategies at their point of need. For every unit of work, students complete a pre-assessment, which supports both students and teachers to ascertain an appropriate individual learning goal for each student. Students from Grades 3-6 are explicitly taught data literacy so they can make informed choices and have student voice in choosing their own learning goals based on their data.
After a learning goal has been set, students receive explicit teaching about their learning goal in small groups with the teacher, learn various ways to practise and work towards achieving that goal, and once achieved, work on the next goal in the sequence. All students across the school move through a developmental sequence of learning goals which ensures every student is being taught at their individual point of need, and learning progress is made clear, visible and achievable for each and every student.
Students also regularly engage in open-ended, problem-solving lessons. These rich tasks with a low floor and high ceiling, allow students to access the problem at their point of need. Strategies to develop problem-solving skills are explicitly taught and students work collaboratively to solve complex problems that require novel and critical thinking.
Mathematics learning is enhanced through Mathematical Investigations which see the explicit teaching and then investigation of the applied Mathematics strands Measurement & Geometry and Statistics & Probability. The Investigations allow students to see the use of Mathematics in real life, apply their skills in realistic and authentic ways, and learn the organisational skills of planning and maintaining an ongoing project.
Lysterfield Primary School is also proud to run the LPS Maths Masters Program. This program seeks to build fluency and automaticity with number concepts and number facts in our students. By increasing fluency, cognitive bandwidth is released to attend to more complex problem solving and critical thinking tasks. Through LPS Maths Masters, students practise a series of skills in short sessions across the week. When fluent in a group of skills, students receive a coloured belt award in recognition of their achievements. This whole school program consists of 9 coloured belts, so students practise skills at their point of need, and always have a belt they are striving to achieve – that is until they achieve Black Belt and become an LPS Maths Master!
STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths
Lysterfield Primary School has embraced STEM as part of 21st century learning. STEM is an approach to learning that integrates the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Through STEM students develop key skills including:
Problem solving
Creativity
Critical analysis
Teamwork
Independent thinking
Initiative
Communication
Digital literacy.
Lysterfield Primary School understands how the world is evolving and how the continual advances in technology are changing the way students learn, connect and interact every day. Skills developed by students through STEM provide them with the foundation to succeed at school and beyond.
Our teaching and learning sequences for science are constructed around the Victorian Curriculum. Science includes biological, chemical, earth and space and physical science. We teach science at Lysterfield through our termly inquiries that alternate on a yearly basis.
At Lysterfield our technologies curriculum provides a framework for students to learn how to use technologies to create innovative solutions that meet current and future needs. We provide opportunities for our students to participate in lunchtime clubs across the school. These include:
Robotics and coding
Lego Club
Makerspace
Just like our students, we consider ourselves lifelong learners and strive for continual development in our own teaching and learning. Lysterfield Primary School is in partnership with the CSIRO, through the Scientist in Schools program, which provides a scientist with whom we work alongside to create engaging learning experiences for our students.