Welcome to the early years at Manchester Primary School. On a typical day in our Foundation, Grade One and Grade Two classroom, we begin by tuning the students in to the learning for the rest of the day. We focus on our specific learning intentions that are based on the Victorian Curriculum and embed social, emotional, cognitive, physical, language, Literacy and Numeracy skills, allowing every student to achieve success.
Four times a week, the students engage in Investigations where they explore the learning areas and direct their own learning. Our students learn about themselves as learners and discover how they learn best through developmental play and exploration of the various learning opportunities in their environment. During Investigations, our teachers scaffold student learning, extend the students and work on the students’ personal learning goals to meet their individual learning needs. Following Investigations, we reflect on the learning that has taken place and draw links from the students’ Investigations to explicitly teach Literacy and Numeracy skills. Hence, our students are immersed in Literacy and Numeracy all day and not just during the time when we “do” maths.
The rest of the school day is explicit teaching time. Our students engage in Reading, Writing, Grammar and Spelling, Numeracy activities, Wellbeing activities, Specialist lessons and extra-curricular activities.