Literacy & Numeracy
At Montmorency South Primary School, we are committed to ensuring that all students develop the skills to achieve academic success and to prepare them for lifelong learning. Effective literacy skills are essential to meet the demands of today’s society and that of the future. In order to teach these skills, we need to have common understandings of high impact teaching strategies and evidence based instructional strategies. We have a whole school focus on improving the achievement standards in the English dimensions of oral language, reading, writing and spelling with a particular focus on developing students’ literacy comprehension skills. We know we must track and identify students’ skills and understandings to know ‘where to next’.
Our aim is to engage children in literacy experiences, so they develop into curious individuals who have a love of and passion for reading, writing and language.
The school places particular emphasis on:
- Oral Language Development
- Reading Comprehension
- The Writing Process: Planning, Composing, Recording, Revising, Editing and Publishing
- Quick Write – A writing strategy which can be used in any content area to develop writing fluency, to build the habit of reflection into a learning experience, and to informally assess student thinking
- Including various text types: Narrative, Procedure, Report, Recount, Persuasive, Personal and Descriptive, along with variations such as Imaginative Recount etc.
- Spelling and Handwriting
At Montmorency South Primary School, we have a whole school focus on improving the achievement standards in the mathematics strands of Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry and Statistics and Probability, with a particular focus on developing number fluency. The proficiencies of Understanding, Fluency, Problem Solving and Reasoning are fundamental to learning mathematics and working mathematically, and are applied across all three strands.
During maths lessons teachers aim to give students the opportunity to explore finding answers and provide time for them to explain why it works. Teacher model, explicitly teach key skills needed to solve real world problems and examples along with providing opportunities to apply these skills in practical situations
Teachers develop understanding by:
- Prompting thinking & questioning
- Providing opportunities to manipulate, experience and observe (use of resources)
- Encouraging thinking and investigation
- Encouraging reasoning and making connections
- Engaging in discussion
- Encouraging children to make links and generalise
When planning for maths, teachers use a variety of mathematical tasks and activities to cater for individual student needs and learning styles including:
- Skill Based: Explicitly teaching skills and procedures needed to complete tasks and activities. Skills-based learning provides classroom environments where independence, thinking skills, collaboration and active learning are developed at the same time as knowledge is attained.
- Games and Activities: Teaching students maths and building number fluency and mathematical understanding through engaging and fun hands-on challenges, puzzles, quizzes and games. Creating a “Fish Bowl” around the table to demonstrate the setup of an activity/game and to explain the expectations of a task.
- Open Ended Tasks and Activities: A task in which students are required to generate a solution or response to a problem when there is no single correct answer. An opportunity to extend thinking of students using a variety of responses and strategies.
- Real Life/Rich Investigations: Rich tasks open up maths. They transform the subject from a collection of procedures and facts into a living, connected experience. Rich tasks allow the learner to ‘get inside’ the mathematics. The learning becomes far more interesting, engaging and powerful; allowing students to link future learning.