TEACHING & LEARNING

HEGGERTY

In Foundation, students participate in daily phonological awareness lessons using the Heggerty program. These short, engaging sessions deliver clear and focused instruction to support the development of essential early reading and listening skills. Students build key skills such as recognising and manipulating rhyming words, syllables, onset and rime, and individual sounds (phonemes) through activities including sound identification, blending, and segmenting.

PHONICS

In Foundation, Year 1 and Year 2, students receive explicit and systematic phonics instruction through the Sounds-Write program. Lessons are delivered daily in a carefully sequenced order, supporting students to develop a strong understanding of the relationship between sounds and letters. Students are taught to decode (read) and encode (spell) words by blending and segmenting sounds, and they consolidate these skills through structured practice activities and decodable texts aligned with their stage of learning.

LITERACY DAILY REVIEW

In Foundation, Year 1 and Year 2, students participate in daily literacy review sessions that revisit key content from previous weeks and terms. These short, focused lessons reflect how the brain learns best by regularly retrieving previously taught information to strengthen understanding and consolidate it into long-term memory.

Daily reviews include practice in phonics, spelling, vocabulary, and grammar, supporting students to retain essential knowledge and apply it confidently in their reading and writing.

SPELLING

In Years 3 to 6, students engage in daily explicit spelling instruction at their point of need through the Spelling Mastery program. Lessons are carefully sequenced and delivered in a systematic, structured manner, supporting students to understand how words are constructed through sounds, spelling patterns, and meaningful word parts.

Students learn and apply spelling rules, improve accuracy, and build confidence in both writing and independent word-solving. The program emphasises morphemes (prefixes, roots, and suffixes), alongside phonics knowledge, to promote sustained spelling success.

FLUENCY

In Foundation to Year 6, each day, students take part in partner reading to build their reading fluency. They read short passages aloud with a partner, focusing on expression, accuracy, and pace. Through repeated readings, students become more confident and fluent, which also helps improve their comprehension.

WRITING

At Stawell West PS, we prioritise the development of strong sentence-writing skills as the foundation for clear and effective communication. Inspired by The Writing Revolution, our approach explicitly teaches students how to construct well-formed sentences using specific sentence types and clear structures.

We follow a step-by-step, systematic approach to teaching writing genres, with particular emphasis on narrative and persuasive writing. Each year, students build on previously learned skills, progressively developing greater confidence, control, and sophistication in their writing.

KNOWLEDGE AND LITERATURE RICH CURRICULUM

At Stawell West PS, we recognise that strong reading comprehension relies on both effective decoding skills and rich background knowledge. The more students understand about the world, including its history, geography, science and stories, the more successfully they can interpret, analyse and connect with what they read.

Our curriculum is carefully designed to build knowledge over time through rich texts and meaningful topics. This approach supports students to make connections, think critically and engage confidently with both fiction and non fiction texts.

From Foundation to Year 6, we draw on a combination of school developed units, Ochre Education and Read2Learn programs. In Foundation and Year 1, new content is introduced primarily through oral language before gradually transitioning to written texts by the end of Year 1. In the middle and senior years, students alternate between novel focused units and Humanities based studies, exploring engaging topics such as Fairy Tales and Fables, the Vikings, Natural Disasters, The Twits, Malala and Once, just to name a few.

NUMERACY PROGRAM

In Foundation to Year 4, we are currently rolling out the Explicit Mathematics Program. This structured, evidence-based approach to teaching mathematics strengthens early numeracy and mathematical thinking through clear learning intentions, carefully sequenced skill development, and frequent formative assessment. The program ensures all students build strong foundational understandings in number, patterns, measurement and spatial reasoning. Daily lessons follow a consistent routine incorporating teacher modelling, guided practice and opportunities for independent application, supporting confidence and fluency in key concepts. The program also includes differentiated activities to meet diverse learner needs and ongoing data-informed reflection to guide instruction and improve student outcomes across the early years.

Our Year 5–6 Mathematics program is designed to build confident, capable and curious learners. We use explicit teaching to clearly model new concepts and strategies, breaking learning into small, achievable steps so students develop strong foundations and experience success.

A key feature of our program is the daily focus on fluency. Through targeted practice, students develop automatic recall of number facts and efficient strategies. This automaticity reduces cognitive load, allowing learners to focus on deeper thinking and more complex problem solving.

We also incorporate daily reviews to revisit previously taught concepts. This regular consolidation strengthens long-term memory, embeds understanding and helps students make connections across different areas of mathematics.

Learning is guided by the four mathematical proficiencies: understanding, fluency, problem solving and reasoning. Students explore rich tasks, explain their thinking, justify solutions and apply their knowledge in meaningful contexts. This ensures our program develops flexible thinking and a deep understanding of how mathematics can be applied in different contexts.