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At Somerville Primary School, we provide outstanding educational opportunities through engaging learning experiences. Our highly effective staff utilise researched, evidence-based approaches to ensure the highest levels of consistency and quality across all year levels. We prioritise high levels of differentiation to cater to each student’s unique learning needs, and our intervention and extension programs offer additional support and challenges as required. We celebrate the successes of our students, fostering a positive and encouraging environment that inspires achievement and personal growth.
Our programs adhere to the prescribed curriculum for all government schools, and we offer specialist programs in Physical Education, Visual and Performing Arts and Auslan. Additionally, we provide students with opportunities to participate in a broad range of extracurricular activities, including Instrumental Music, Wakakirri, and Year 3, 4, 5, and 6 camps. These activities take place in various indoor and outdoor learning spaces, enhancing the overall educational experience.
Our Prep – 2 curriculum emphasises literacy development through a Systematic, Synthetic Phonics Approach. This structured learning time allows all children in Prep to Year 2 to practise and reinforce their skills in:
In Years 3 – 6, we build upon the foundational skills developed in earlier years to further enhance and extend children’s literacy abilities using more complex texts. Our structured approach to Reading and Writing includes:
From Grade 2 to 6, students engage in novel studies featuring a diverse selection of authors and genres, carefully curated to enrich their literary experience. These books are provided by the school to ensure each student has access to quality literature that aligns with our curriculum goals and encourages a love for reading. Through these studies, students explore themes, characters, and plots, fostering critical thinking skills and deepening their understanding of storytelling techniques. This initiative not only enhances their literacy skills but also cultivates a lifelong appreciation for literature and broadens their cultural and intellectual horizons.
Students also visit our school library weekly, where they have the opportunity to browse a wide array of books to cater to their diverse interests and reading levels. During these visits, they select books to take home and also to store in their personal book boxes within the classroom. This practice encourages independent reading habits and allows students to explore genres and topics of their choice, fostering a love for reading beyond the classroom curriculum.
Writing at Somerville Primary School is an extension of the understandings learnt in reading sessions as the skills are dependent on one another. Students apply their knowledge of language to become authors. To build these skills we analyse writing. Students are taught explicitly to support their learning needs and develop into original and authentic authors.
Our approach to teaching writing is grounded in the 6+1 Traits of Writing framework. This research-based model provides a comprehensive and effective method for developing students’ writing skills, ensuring they become confident and competent writers.
Our program integrates these traits into all aspects of our teaching and learning. Students engage in various writing activities, from brainstorming and drafting to revising and publishing, with a focus on each trait throughout the process. Teachers provide explicit instruction and constructive feedback, guiding students to refine their skills in each area.
At Somerville Primary School, we believe that exposure to high-quality writing is essential for developing strong writing skills. To support this, we incorporate mentor texts into our writing curriculum. Mentor texts are exemplary pieces of writing that serve as models for students, demonstrating effective use of the 6+1 Traits of Writing. Mentor texts provide students with a source of inspiration and a clear example of what successful writing looks like. They help spark ideas and encourage students to experiment with different styles and techniques.
At Somerville Primary School we are focused on delivering a high quality, ambitious Numeracy program that is constructed on the belief that every child can learn mathematics to a high level, integrated with evidence based research and current best practice.
We recognise that in order to achieve excellence in numeracy teaching and learning, our approach must include learning opportunities that allow students to demonstrate their thinking and understanding as well as be able to apply their knowledge in a variety of ways. Through the use of explicit instruction and scaffolded experiences, we are afforded learning opportunities that are open-ended experiences and investigations that allow students to problem solve and to make real life connections, which enables differentiation, high engagement and collaborative learning. Pairing this approach with the use of manipulatives and hands-on experiences across all year levels, students are better able to develop a conceptual understanding of mathematics.
Teachers will work collaboratively with each other to share their learnings and celebrate their successes. We recognise that teachers’ own knowledge and understanding of mathematics is key to improving educational outcomes for our students, therefore, we endeavour to continually develop each teacher’s capacity to provide high quality numeracy teaching and learning. Teachers will use a variety of formative and summative assessment alongside the Victorian Curriculum to inform planning, teaching and learning and to assess individual student growth and achievement.
Students will adopt a growth mindset that values mistakes through trial and error. We recognise that students’ learning is maximised when they are able to take ownership of the learning by engaging in peer discussion, asking questions, taking risks and being curious.
At Somerville Primary School, we are passionate about Numeracy and will continue to strive for excellence within our Numeracy Program whilst fostering enthusiasm and a love of Numeracy.
Students are provided with explicit teaching and structured learning experiences that are challenging, open-ended, hands-on and are related to real life applications. Students are also given opportunities to demonstrate their thinking and understanding as well as being able to apply their knowledge in a variety of ways.
Our Numeracy program has a strong emphasis on building positive dispositions towards mathematics, fostering a lifelong love of mathematics that values its purpose to help us in the real world.
Our Numeracy program is guided by the Victorian Curriculum and the Proficiencies of Understanding, Fluency, Problem Solving and Reasoning to create challenging learning tasks that cater to all students learning needs.
At Somerville Primary School, inquiry learning aligns with the Victorian Curriculum, fostering a deep understanding and engagement in Civics and Citizenship, Economics and Business, Geography, History, Science, Design and Technologies, and Digital Technologies. Inquiry learning encourages students to explore, ask questions, and develop critical thinking skills, ensuring they become active participants in their education.
To enrich our inquiry curriculum, we provide a variety of opportunities for hands-on learning through incursions, excursions, and camps. These rich learning experiences encourage students to challenge their preconceptions, engage deeply with content, and develop a lifelong love of learning. Our commitment to inquiry learning ensures that our students are well-prepared to meet the diverse demands of their futures with confidence and curiosity.
Opportunities are provided for the class to work together to find out and to research the concept to challenge what students already know. The content and ideas are frontloaded through reading and discussion so that students develop their knowledge and understanding. English and mathematics skills that will be required for working on the topic are explicitly taught. Students collaborate to sort out, by organising and presenting, the information they have gained through eg reports, graphs, videos, oral presentations, timelines etc. Then students go further to explore their own questions and opportunities are provided for group and independent investigations into aspects of the unit that are of interest.
Towards the end of the unit students are supported to make connections with prior learning and to commit to celebrate their learning through an authentic action, options of which have been discussed with students at the beginning and during the unit. Learning is shared with an audience and students reflect on their learning.
