At Mickleham Primary School, we aim to develop students’ potential to fully participate as active and engaged citizens through the Victorian Curriculum. Literacy and Numeracy skills are prioritised through Inquiry-based learning and problem solving.
We implement a variety of team-teaching strategies and work in highly collaborative teams to strengthen the teaching & learning cycle for all students.
Instructional Model
We believe students learn best when they are supported to learn by building new understanding onto what they already know. This involves students experiencing ‘productive struggle’ – challenging themselves and being challenged to explore their world in a supportive and caring learning environment.
Our teachers plan collaboratively and implement the High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS) in every lesson, including: Goal Setting, Structuring Lessons, Explicit Teaching, Worked Examples, Collaborative Learning, Multiple exposures, Questioning, Feedback, Metacognitive Strategies, and Differentiated Teaching.
All lessons follow the Instructional Model:
- Warm up
- Learning intention and success criteria
- Explicit mini lesson
- Purposeful practice of explicit teaching, differentiated for student needs
- Reflection of learning
Ready to Learn
Every day, our students begin with activities designed to prepare them for a productive day of learning. These activities include:
- School Wide Positive Behaviour (SWPBS) / Respectful Relationships / Social Skills lesson
- Zones of Regulation and personal goal setting / monitoring
- Class Meetings
- Socratic Seminars (Grade 5/6)
- Auslan lessons
Building Classroom Communities
The first four weeks or so of every school year begins with a unit of work designed to establish highly effective learning behaviours. Teachers plan literature-based lessons to reinforce our school values and the selected theme. Themes may include: resilience, persistence and being proud. Classroom and school routines are established for the year ahead.
Competencies & Dispositions
Over the past three years our focus has moved towards helping our students to understand themselves as learners and what it means to be an effective learner. Whilst this has begun to evolve, we are hoping to prioritise this through our Term 1, 2024 Review process. Our collective interest in building learner competencies and dispositions will be a focus for future work. This also implies a focus for our staff on understanding highly effective teaching and learning strategies and practices.
